


Bent, not Broken

by chris_the_cynic



Category: Kim Possible (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-15 11:22:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4604838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chris_the_cynic/pseuds/chris_the_cynic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kim has lost everything and everyone, the experience has changed her, and she sets out to bring down those who did it to her, but even she isn't sure if she's seeking justice or retribution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Elsewhere it was noted that my KP works thus far are lacking in action-genre type action. That's a fair crit, and amoung the many ideas I've had on hold is this one which should allow for action quickly and relatively often. It's also an attempt on my part to venture into "pulling out all the stops unfettered id channeling" fiction. That said, do be warned that one of the reasons I haven't really ventured into it before is that I'm not really predisposed to id-fic and worry I might lack the talent for it. I feel like I tend to be too thinky for the genre.
> 
> Also note that Chi is pronounced like the ancient Greek letter. (The one that looks like "X".) So "Ch" from "Christmas" and "i" from "I". He's an original character from my "Here's how it is" _Kim Possible_ continuity but since I've never made much progress in writting it down (a retelling feels like it could be boring) this is the first time he's been seen outside of my head and some notes on my computer. Even the scraps of "Here's how it is" on my personal blog don't have any Chi in them yet.

Kim knew she was dreaming, but that knowledge didn't allow her to avoid reliving the memory her mind seemed intent on inflicting on her.  It was from years ago.  She tried to think of anything else.  It was from when she was in high school, helping out a classmate, maybe she could think of the kids who she'd... It was no good.  She remembered blood.

Her dreams were always only thought, sight, and sound --never smell, taste, or feeling-- so she didn't feel the sensation of dried blood covering her arms, though she remembered hating it.  She saw the blood on her, Ron's blood, and heard his ragged breathing from next to her.

Even though she knew Ron made a full recovery afterward, the memory overwhelmed her and she felt every bit as worried that he'd die as she had been that day.

She should have known how far over her head she was when Shego offered to help without any kind of prompting.  No blackmail, no grudge to settle.  Shego just showed up and offered her services.  Shego--

Shego!  Maybe she could think about Shego and escape this wretched memory.  This was the first time Shego willingly joined up with her, but it was hardly the last.  Some of the things from just before it all went wrong--

Ron coughed up blood and phlegm.  She was back in the memory.

She rechecked Ron's wounds to make sure none had been reopened by the force of his coughs.  Their captors hadn't waited to see if his monkey power would manifest, they'd made sure that he was out of the fight regardless and thus, as they put it, "eliminated an unpredictable variable".

They seemed to think that she should be grateful they'd let him live.  Her as well, though in her case she worried about their reasons.

Finished checking Ron's wounds and having noted that his breathing had changed from ragged to shallow after the coughing, she held her head in her hands.  There was no mercy here.  Ron, she'd overheard when they'd thought her unconscious, they'd avoided killing for fear that a mortal wound might trigger the monkey magic they hoped to avoid.  As for her, that she was less clear on.  She thought she'd heard something about seeing if there was "a biological explanation for..." and that was all she'd caught.

She never did learn what they were talking about, Kim thought.  The facility had been utterly destroyed shortly after the memory took place, all records lost.  Its sister facilities had suffered the same fate.  It was no accident, he'd--

And then he entered the memory.  Chi.  The one she was supposed to be protecting.  Kim had laughed, and she relived that bitter, mirthless laugh.  When she'd taken on Chi's case she figured it would be no problem.  She'd lost count of how many times had she helped to stop corrupt scientists, after all.

By then she'd understood that there was a world of difference between a mad scientist, or an evil scientist, and an amoral scientist with shady defense industry ties.  Corrupt scientists were a far more varied group than she had initially believed.

So she had laughed.

Kim remembered smelling Chi's blood even though she didn't actually experience the smell in the dream.  Even if she hadn't remembered smelling it, she'd know his shirt was still wet with it.  The loose shirt was clinging to his side where the drab garment was marred by a large splotch of blood.

When Chi was roughly thrown into his cage and she heard the lock engage, Kim was focused on the blood --and the way Chi moved.  The wound was obviously bad.  Very bad from the way he was acting.

"You have to give him medical attention!" Kim shouted.

"He's had it," one of their captors said.  That one was the only one to linger in the room with them.  The had others left promptly.  Just as he was about to leave too, he seemed to change his mind.  He walked to Chi's cage and said, "Maybe now you've learned not to try to escape during surgery..

Chi swore in multiple languages.

Their captor laughed.

Then Chi spoke with disturbing calm, "I think you'll find I'm a slow learner..

"Now that we know you won't stay under," the captor said, "why bother with medication at all?  From now on we'll operate on you without anesthetic.  Nothing but good strong restraints.  That'll break you..

Chi smiled.  It had scared Kim then.  It scared her now.  More than nightmares.

"Oh, I don't break," Chi said.  His voice was almost playful, but dangerous.  Disturbing.  "I bend..

Even their captor seemed to pick up on how wrong this was.  Kim caught the faintest shiver.  He'd tried to suppress it, Kim could tell, but he'd failed.

"You should be careful though," Chi said.  "If I bend too far, I might stay that way..

For a moment there was near complete silence.  Kim held her breath, so did their captor.  Chi seemed content to be quiet.  Only the shallow breathing of Ron, still unconscious, disturbed the air.

"I don't think that would be good for you," Chi said.

That's when Kim woke up.

It wasn't hard to pull a meaning from the dream.  It was very easy in fact.

* * *

Echelon was never nearly as powerful as people assumed or feared, but in an age of self driving cars and toasters that could hold a conversation, the technology existed to make significant use of Echelon's level of surveillance.  What it was best at, it turned out, wasn't foiling terrorist attacks or keeping tabs on foreign governments but instead giving various people with access the ability to track, control, or interdict the communications of ordinary civilians with little to nothing in terms of resources.

People like Kim, in other words.

If she simply picked up a phone and made a call, Echelon would catch it, then voice recognition would identify her in a few moments, and the system would pinpoint her location in even fewer.  Using a burn phone was slightly safer, but it would narrow her location using whatever cell phone towers she was nearest to.

Kim had seen too many people laid low for simply being in the same vicinity as her, she'd long since promised herself not one more.  It was a promise that she'd broken, and would continue to break, but she did make an attempt.

There was another problem with simply making the call she wanted to make.

Pragmatically, what she wanted to do would be impossible if her call were intercepted.  She couldn't place a call, she needed to steal one.  Specifically she needed to illicitly access a communications system so heavily encrypted that Echelon would never hear her voice run by an organization so paranoid as to obfuscate the stations from which even mundane calls were made and supported by an technological department so far ahead of the curve that they were using new hardware six to eight months before the NSA knew it was even under development.

There were two definite options, six probables, and nineteen potentials.  "Potentials" being an optimistic euphemism for "long shots".  Kim had no time for maybe.  She picked the best: HenchCo.

There was even a branch not too far from where she was.

The way forward was crystal clear, and that was always nice.

She'd long since thrown dignity aside and the coins she'd scrounged from gutters, storm drains, places with grunge not yet understood by science, and so forth had helped her stay alive and, occasionally, hydrated.  A quick check showed that she did have two quarters.

Five minutes later she went to a disreputable store, 'Gunz for Less', slipped into the back office, and searched online for local transit stations and restaurants that delivered.  Ten minutes after that she ordered pizza from the payphone at a Greyhound station.

Once, Kim had had little use for landlines.  The Kimmunicator had been able to do pretty much whatever she'd needed.  She hadn't even noticed as payphones had disappeared from the modern landscape.  Now, however, it paid to know things like the fact that transit stations --train and bus stations, airports, so forth-- were some of the few places where you could be almost sure to find a payphone.

Payphones had two advantages.  The first was that they were designed to be public.  Anyone could walk up to one and use it, so they weren't tied to any individual or organization.  The second was that the companies that maintained payphones didn't make enough money to have them even the least bit secure.  Thus she'd just given away her location, without implicating anyone as an accomplice, for a couple of quarters

Response time was a bit slow.

The pizza almost beat the hover jet to her location.  It would have been embarrassing for Kim if she'd actually been expected to pay for the pizza.  Worse, it would have endangered the delivery person.  Still, the hover jet did come first, and the pizza delivery girl wisely abandoned the delivery when she arrived to see an armed and armored three man team rush out of the hover jet that, officially, wasn't supposed to exist and charge Kim.

Kim noted colors.  The hover jet was standard issue for top GJ agents; the armor was also GJ standard issue-- though usually it was given to the lower ranking agents that were tasked with mundane law enforcement and operated in groups instead of the usually solo agents that got hover jets.  The coloring --or rather the lack of color-- was definitely not standard issue.  The only reason to replace the standard coloring with monochrome matte black was for deniability.

In most cases a different paint job wouldn't make much of a difference, but the Global Justice Alliance had the WEE copying its every move.  The Doctors Director might have stepped down from heading the organizations, but the two agencies still operated as mirror images of one another.  Without the official colors it was almost impossible to know if the equipment originated with the GJA or the WEE.

Almost.  Kim could tell.  Subtle details here and there.  WEE's refusal to go metric led to minute differences in size, certain modifications to the basic designs were improvised by the two organizations as shortcomings were discovered via use in the field.  Difficulties with the way an agents' gloves and sleeves interacted had been solved by modding the sleeves in one organization and modifying the gloves in the other organization, for example.

The agents from the two agencies also tended to use slightly different tactics, and tended to have markedly distinct comportments.

The equipment was of Global Justice manufacture.  The agents had received Global Justice training.

They'd go down easy.

* * *

The lead agent of Team Echo Niner Tango was very sure of his own professionalism.  His uniform was clean, his vehicle "swept" daily to keep it free of identifying fibers, his weapons perfectly tuned up, his proficiency in each never less than 30% over the level required by regulation.  His orders were always clear, concise, and without ambiguity.

He stressed the importance of certainty to his men.  He made sure they even _thought_ in ways that prevented confusion and ambiguity.  They were required to understand that they were part of Team _Echo Niner Tango_ , not the team designated "E9T".  "E9T" could be easily misheard, miscommunicated, misconstrued.

He made sure that they all obeyed orders without question.  He made sure they polished their boots.

He made sure that they were combat ready 24 hours a day.  An agent who couldn't preform at regulation defined 100% within minutes of being roused would have to either shape up or be washed out of his unit.  An agent who couldn't preform at regulation 100% after being awake for 36 hours would shape up or be wash out.

An agent who couldn't consistently exceed regulation defined 100% when given adequate prep time and adequate sleep would be washed out.  There was no point in even _trying_ to improve on the slackers who didn't meet _that_ standard.

When the order for this mission had come in he had been wide awake and well rested.  He had quickly absorbed the information.  It was a simple mission to capture the subject and transfer her to another unit who would handle her detention.  The subject was a former "freelance hero" --vigilante, obviously-- whose location was ascertained because she ordered pizza from a public payphone at a bus station.  Amateur.

Then he'd picked two of his best and headed out to apprehend the target.

One agent would have been enough, but he believed in being thorough.  Others might lament how boring the job would be, others might wish for a challenge, but he believed that the success of a mission should be assured before the jet left the hangar.

For him there was no such thing as too easy.  As he left the hover jet with his men and approached the subject on foot, he knew that this would be extremely easy, but that was as it should be.  Excitement was for amateurs.  Professionals got the job done.

The subject wasn't even trying to flee.  This would be a perfect operation.  Entirely without incident, without difficulty, without ambiguity.  Certain victory.  In a word: easy.  How it should be.

The lead agent of Team Echo Niner Tango was very sure of his own professionalism.  Even his thoughts were filled out in duplicate.

* * *

There had been a time when Global Justice enforcement operations always had an even number of agents.  The pair had been the basic unit of GJ enforcement, so any combination of base units made an even number.  It had taken Global Justice disturbingly long to realize that this meant that any time they surrounded anyone or anything each agent was directly facing another agent.

Once Kim would have thought it somewhat cruel, perhaps even uncouth, to take joy in memories of the various friendly fire issues this situation had caused, but now a smile came to her lips as she thought of why she was facing three agents.  The standard issue hover jet simply didn't seat five comfortably and GJ, and those using their training, no longer fielded teams of four.

Other than the smile she didn't change her composure at all when the men approached.  Standard procedure said that they'd immediately attempt to surround her, so the first threat would be the agent with the least ground to cover: the one that stopped in front of her rather than flanking her.

It was nice of them to put the first obstacle front and center.

Sure enough, the center agent stopped short of her and fired his STOP watch.  Kim easily dodged.

The primary feature of the wrist mounted taser, Kim had no idea what "STOP" stood for, was that it didn't look like a weapon and thus could take people by surprise.  Those who fell victim to it either assumed the agent was unarmed, assumed the agent still had all weapons holstered, or weren't expecting attack from the agent at all.  Once you knew about the STOP watch, though, you knew to treat an agent pointing an arm at you as an agent pointing a loaded weapon at you.

In fact, there were more than a few times that an agent had raised one or both arms in harmless gestures but been misinterpreted as aiming their STOP watch.  Sometimes an attempt to deescalate a situation ended up setting off violence.  Once, Kim had sympathy for the agents in such situation.  Once, she thought it was horrible and pushed for ways to avoid such senseless violence.

That was before.

She still knew, on some level, that most of the agents at Global Justice, and most outside agents to receive training or technology from them, were good people.  She just found it hard to care these days given the side of the agency, and indeed the entire covert community, that had come to dominate her life.

So what if an agent tried to make a harmless "halt" gesture only to be treated as if they'd pulled out a weapon and aimed it straight at someone?  The particular agent might be innocent as an individual, but they all were part of a system that did far worse things than whatever might befall them, and did those things to _actual_ innocent people.  They were colluders.  All of them.

Like Kim had been once.

She'd been so stupid then; she hated herself for it.

She channeled all of that emotion into a lunge at the agent who had fired his STOP watch.  Her hands smashed into his shoulders, knocking him back passed his ability to balance, and she used him as a platform to vault off of.

The agent hit the ground.  Kim landed between him and his hover jet.  His colleagues were still in the process of flanking Kim's previous position; their momentum was carrying them away from her.

As tempting as simply taking what she wanted then and there was, she'd have better luck if the higher ups didn't know she had it until she was done with it.  Plus, beating up these thugs would be fun.  She turned to face the agents.

The one she'd knocked down was getting up, the other two had turned themselves around and were now on either side of that one.  Kim mentally labeled the three agents "Left", "Right", and "Center".

She charged Center again, a move all three would interpret as her trying to finish off the already weakened agent.  Left and Right tried to raise their STOP watches in time to intercept her, but the distance was too small and Kim covered it too quickly.

Center braced himself for an impact, Kim veered to left at the last moment and tackled Left.  She didn't really care about Left --she'd deal with him later-- she cared about his weapon.

The force of the tackle had her landing on Left, which nicely cushioned the landing, behind Center and Right.  That gave her a decent line of sight passed Center to Right.  She wasn't gentle when she pulled Left's arm to fire the STOP watch at Right.

At this point Center was ready to engage her again.  Maybe it was because Kim was still on top of left, or maybe it was because he had figured out Kim was capable of dealing with the STOP watches, either way, Center adopted a hand to hand fighting stance.

Kim was still on the ground, which gave her a distinct disadvantage, so the first thing she did was get Center to join her.  There were any number of approaches that Kim could take, but she opted for simple: she intertwined her legs with his and then rolled sideways a bit.

Center had a soft landing and got back on his feet almost as quickly as Kim got on hers.  This was expected.  The only thing that would have kept him down, their tangled legs, kept Kim down for just as long.  Once they got separated they were on equal footing.  Which had been the plan.

He threw a few punches, Kim blocked them easily.  She made a few feints, but never actually attacked him.  She was just waiting, she might as well have been filing her nails.

When she heard Left getting to his feet, the time was right.  She landed a punch in Center's abdomen and turned to Left.  She didn't do it with any particular speed, there wasn't a need for it.  When she was facing Left, he was just about ready to fire his STOP watch.  She let him think he'd won.

It would have been quicker to just grab his arm and use it herself again, but it was so much more fun to push his arm out of the way at the last moment and watch his face as he realized where the shot would land.

That was the end of the wordlessness that had defined the fight.  As Left watched Center fall, knowing that it was the weapon he fired that did the job, he said, "Crap."

He seemed to have completely forgotten about Kim in that moment, and she decided to remind him she was there.  "Nice banter," she said.  Then threw a punch that landed in the center of his chest.  With the wind knocked out of him the threat was neutralized for the moment.  "Very witty."

The agent was taking longer to recover from the blow than she anticipated, and Kim was getting impatient, so she didn't even bother fighting.  She shoved him to the ground.

Right was shaking off the effect of being hit by Left's weapon, pretty much on Kim's expected schedule, so she turned to him.

"Need a moment?" she asked, mocking, as he got to his feet.  Her respect for him increased when he simply nodded, gestured thanks, and then got to his feet more slowly, more carefully, with the moment she'd offered.

Right closed his eyes, inhaled deeply through his nose, then looked at Kim.  "Ready now," he said as he assumed a fighting stance.

He was a good fighter.  He stood no chance of winning, but Kim had underestimated him and as a result he landed a few hits.  Left was the first of the others to rise.  Kim knocked him back down with a kick to the shoulder.

A complex bit of grappling with Right and she was able fire Right's weapon at Left, taking him out for the moment.

Kim pushed away from Right, spun, and was about to deliver a roundhouse kick when she noticed that Right had stepped back, had his STOP watch arm pointed at the ground and his other hand in a gesture of "hold on."

Kim stumbled a bit because she'd built up momentum for the kick, but she gave the agent a chance to speak.

"Would it save time if I just surrendered?" Right asked.

"It might," Kim said.  "Do you have zip ties?"

"For restraining hands?"

Kim nodded.

Right nodded.  Then he handed them over.

"I accept your surrender," Kim said.

"Wha?" Center asked.

Without hesitation Right shot Center with his STOP watch.  Then he said, "Shut up, boss."

"You fire before saying your one liner," Kim observed.  "Smart."

"Thank you," Right said.  "What do you plan to do to us?"

"Just leave you restrained somewhere you won't be found for at least three hours and fifteen minutes."

"Yay," Right said in a way that reminded Kim of Shego.

Shego.  Kim felt a pang of sadness. but pushed passed it.  She had work to do.

"If you need to pee, now is the time," she said to Right while roughly binding the wrists and ankles of Center and Left.

* * *

Right remained silent as Kim moved the other agents to a dumpster, put him in with them, bound them together, and finally closed the lid.  He had even Helped Kim carry the the other two.  Center remained incapacitated the entire time.  Left, however, returned to his senses just before Kim closed the dumpster lid.

He was dull and predictable.  He literally said, "You'll never get away with this, Possible."

Kim heard a faint, "I knew it," and investigated after closing the lid.

* * *

Darcy the Deliverator generally passed her working time by imagining that her job was more interesting than it was.  She wasn't delivering pizza on a moped, she was delivering vital technology on a space scooter that made the speed of light look like a snail's pace. 

She converted units to furlongs, firkins, and fortnights in her head just to make things feel exotic and different.

She imagined laser cannon fire and dragon flights.

Today, though, she didn't have to imagine.  Just before she'd arrived at the bus station, an actual black hover jet --not black helicopter; black _hover jet_ \-- landed in front of her and three thugs in black charged out at an apparently unarmed woman.

When she had seen that, Darcy the Deliverator did what anyone with aspirations of being a galactic hero would do: she turned her moped away and found a place to hide.

Then she had watched.  There was something familiar about the woman, and when the woman started to outfight the thugs in black she seemed even more familiar to Darcy.

At first Darcy had thought that the redheaded woman was _like_  Kim Possible, but soon she'd become convinced that the woman _was_ Kim Possible.  Yes, there were a lot of redheaded women in the world, yes, Possible had dropped off the radar before Darcy reached middle school, and yes, there was no reason for someone famous to be here.  But Darcy was sure she was watching Possible.

She'd followed as Possible moved the agents behind the bus station and gotten them into a dumpster.  When a voice from the dumpster said, "You'll never get away with this, Possible," the words, "I knew it," escaped Darcy before she realized she was making noise.

Possible obviously heard her, and came her way.

She tried to escape unseen; Darcy didn't want Possible to think she'd been spying on her, especially since she had been doing just that.

It didn't work.

"Why are you here?" Possible asked.

Kim Possible talked to Darcy.  Kim Possible.   _The_ Kim Possible.  Talked.  To.  Her.

Darcy found herself at a loss for words and finally stuttered out, "Your pizza is still--" at the moped, but Possible cut her off before she got to that bit.

"Can't pay; I'm broke," Possible said.  "You should have run away."

Darcy found her voice and said, "You can have it for free; I'll pay."

Possible looked a bit surprised, but said nothing.

"You were awesome," Darcy said.

Possible ate a few pieces with Darcy while stripping various parts out of the hover jet.

Darcy the Deliverator got to see Kim Possible -- _Kim Possible_ \-- steal a hover jet.

When she left, Possible gave Darcy the rest of the pizza, an engine part from the hover jet, and instructions on how to use it to upgrade her moped.

Darcy the Deliverator had a very good day.

* * *

The team that recovered the hover jet found that it had been set on autopilot and that it had made fifty six stops where Possible could have disembarked.  That was if she had ever been on it in the first place.  All sensors that would have indicated if the hover jet had carried a passenger at all had been removed before it launched the first time.  Further, an unknown quantity of fuel had been siphoned from the tanks making it impossible to estimate how long it, if at all, it had been carrying the weight of a person based on fuel consumption.  Even the longest long shot to guess where she had gone was a no-go.

Several of the stops were near transportation hubs, thus exponentially increasing the number of areas to be searched.

Further complicating matters was that the hover jet had broadcast a signal when they entered it.  The signal was too simple to convey any meaningful information so it didn't help _them_ at all.  Their quarry, however, was certainly alerted to the fact that they'd found the hover jet and would therefore begin searching the the places it stopped.

* * *

Kim didn't carry anything that transmitted, since that could be used to locate her, but she did have things that could receive various signals.  One device in particular, which had once been parts of a satellite phone, a wireless router, a cellular phone, a cordless phone, a walky-talky, a police scanner, and a CB radio, she simply called: The Receiver.

A burst of static from The Receiver let her know that the hover jet had been breached.  She was amazed it had taken that long.  She was almost there, and she'd taken the scenic route, getting off the jet further away from her destination than she started, but near an above ground subway station, riding to the other side of the local metro area on top of a subway car, sneaking onto a commuter train, and finally swapping to a freight train.

She avoided cameras, and no one gave much of a damn about transients like her without reason.  She didn't give anyone a reason.

Even with all the indirect travel, she wouldn't even be half way to her destination, much less a few minutes out, if they hadn't handed her a hover jet.

Everyone consistently underestimated her as a solo act.  True, she'd needed Ron and Wade to save the world --Rufus too; especially Rufus-- but that was at least in part because she'd been accustomed to working as part of a team.

Rufus was overlooked; Ron barely noticed, but everyone knew about Wade and assumed Kim would be unable to deal with tech without him.  She once made a high powered signaling system out of things she found in an airport gift shop and then set it up, in a blizzard, so that planes could land after the regular runway equipment was knocked out.  She did it quickly, she did it well, and she did it without difficulty.

Stripping all of the gear that might help them track her down, hot-wiring the hover jet, setting it up to go on a pseudo-random flight that got her where she wanted to be let off without indicating that that was where she had gone ... it was all no big.

 

* * *

As much as she would have liked to vent some frustrations on Hench's finest, her entire plan called for stealth.  Fortunately, Hench was a traditionalist.

Hench was smart and savvy, which some might assume meant he'd have the best building security imaginable, but in fact it meant he was smart enough and savvy enough to realize that his clients would want access to any noticeable security advances he himself used and that would be a problem.

Villains who succeeded would not be villains who needed to keep buying more products and services from him.  He prided himself on only selling the best, so that meant that he had to encourage their failure through means other than sabotaging his own offerings.

Thus, because of pure economic pragmatism, Jack Hench was a traditionalist.  By having features like unsecured air vents large enough to crawl through, he encouraged the lack of imagination in the super villain community that insured none of them ever actually won in the end.  This, in turn, meant that they kept coming to him for their henchmen and new gadgets.

Of course, things that were less obvious to the casual unethical observer, like the means by which he kept his communications secure, were top of the line, ahead of the curve, and made science fiction look like a Renaissance fair.

Kim moved through the facility like a ghost, but markedly less noticeable.

HenchCo communications were absurdly secure, they had to be given the people they sold to.  If their customers could steal from the company, they would.  Shego had been proof of that before things went wrong.

Moreover, in every regional branch office was a room set aside specifically for Jack Hench himself, should he ever be there and need an office to use.  The ordinary looking phone in that room was the most secure form of communication on the planet.

As an added perk, since underlings were reluctant to invade Mr. Hench's personal workspace, the room was almost certain to be empty at any given time.  Only two things made the "almost" necessary.  The first was that there was a chance Hench could actually be in the room.  The second was that Mr. Hench liked his room clean so there was an occasional need to dust it.

Kim didn't anticipate either one being likely on this day, and was soon rewarded with an empty room and the phone she wanted.  She called Chi.

* * *

A generic pre-recorded voice announced, "You have reached the mail box of Mr. Mira.  Mr. Mira is on--"

Kim said, "Down with Bellerophon," and the message stopped.

"Are you in need of immediate rescue?" the voice asked.

"No," Kim said.

A burst of electronic sounds, which was mercifully quite muted, came over the line.

"The line is confirmed secure," the voice said.  "Do you require transportation?"

"No," Kim said.

Finally she heard Chi's voice, giving all of the information necessary to meet with him.

* * *

"You have any trouble getting here?"

The voice surprised Kim and she gave a start, but stopped herself from entering a fighting stance.  It was Chi's voice and this was his apartment.  "No," she said, turning to him, "freight hopping is just a slow way to travel."

"Great way to avoid being noticed though," Chi said, "and usually more comfortable than checking yourself as luggage."

They each looked over the other for a few moments.

"Apart from your clothes and the layer of filth covering you," Chi said, "you look great."

"Thanks," Kim said.  "You've done well for yourself."  She gestured to the the apartment that was larger than her home.  Her _former_ home.  "Guess crime does pay."

"Not that well, actually," Chi said.

" _Really_ ," Kim said.  Full on sarcasm as she made a point of taking a look at her surroundings.

"Most of the time," Chi said.  "Most of the time it doesn't pay that well.  If you're the next Shego--"

Kim flinched.

"You know what happened to her?" Chi asked.

"Not yet," Kim said.  She wanted to cry and scream.  She wanted to curl up on the ground and give up.  She wanted to burn down the entire world.  "I'm not ready yet.  Just... just pretend we're friends who are catching up for the sake of catching up and there's nothing horrible behind us meeting.

"Just for a few more minutes," Kim said.  She was pleading.  Actually pleading.  It was pathetic, and it made her hate herself.  But she wasn't ready just yet.

"Ok, so if you've got a name for yourself and you're the best at what you do... then you can make a lot, but most people just see me as a low rent freak for hire."

"So all of this?" Kim asked, gesturing to the whole apartment.

"That comes from one thing, or rather one person: Bonnie."

"Bonnie!?"

"She's improved a lot since high school, and even then she always had her moments."

Kim nodded, but added, "Few and far between that they were."

There was an overly long pause, then Kim asked, "So why does Bonnie pay you so much?"

"It's not for my talents," Chi said.  "I'm definitely not worth this."

A memory.

_They were in cages intended to hold test animals.  Ron had regained consciousness but he'd need help to hobble out, Chi's bleeding had stopped.  A single guard was bringing them food.  It was their best chance at escape yet.  Previously their captors had always operated in groups of three or more --though occasionally one had arrived a bit early or lingered a bit longer than the others-- but from what she'd been able to overhear most of the guards had been assigned to protect some kind of shipment._

_Thus: only one guard._

_This was the best chance they'd have, and the key to the cage she was in was tantalizingly close, but the guard was smart enough to have forced her to the back of the cage, and keep a lethal weapon trained on her, when he'd put in the tray of the slop she and Ron were meant to eat.  Now the cage was closed and locked again, the key was on the guard's belt, just out of reach, and the guard was about to walk away._

_Chi caught her attention, he looked at the keys, then at her.  She didn't know what his move was, but she knew he was ready.  She nodded._

_"Hey bright eyes," Chi said.  The guard turned toward Chi, away from Kim, and then cried out in pain.  He stumbled backward and Kim was able to grab the keys to her cage.  Soon she, Ron, and Chi were all out of the cages._

_As they left the room, Chi said, "My grandma was a spitting cobra, you piece of merde," to the guard._

"I've seen what you can do," Kim said.  "I think you're probably worth more."

"Yeah, well it's just you who thinks that," Chi said.

"And Bonnie?" Kim asked.

"I think she considers me a hetaira minus the sex," Chi said.

Kim blinked.  She closed her eyes.  She rubbed her temples.  Finally she just said, "What!?"

"In ancient Greece, hetairai were the highest class of prostitute, but what defined them wasn't primarily, sex.  It was ... intellectual.  Conversation, I guess you'd say.  They were supposed to be able to engage the wealthy male elites' minds by being their intellectual equals.  Or their betters.  The only person to completely school Socrates was a hetaira."

"So," Kim said, "without the sex..."

"I think Bonnie pays me, basically, to be someone intelligent to talk to.  Junior gives her what she wants from a romantic relationship--"

"Whatever that is," Kim said.

"I don't ask.  Anyway, Junior does not satisfy her needs when it come to intelligent conversation, and since the old man died--"

"She pays you."

"Yeah. I mean, she did before, but definitely more since he passed." Chi paused. "There's not a lot of non-Bonnie intelligence living at the island these days. I miss him."

"He was one of a kind," Kim said.

"Bonnie really appreciated what you said at his funeral, by the way.  Junior did too in his own way.  So did I, and I wasn't even close to S S S.  It was really nice of you to say that."

"It was the right thing to do."

"That's hard to come by, these days," Chi said.

"Yeah," Kim said, "I've noticed."

There was a silence.

Kim finally broke it with the word, "Ok," but then lost her steam.

"Ok," she said again.  "How to...

"I've been thinking about that time you came to me --to Team Possible-- for help."

"I remember," Chi said, rubbing his right side slightly.

"I've been thinking about what they did to you, and what it did to you.  How you changed."

"Not my best week," Chi admitted.

"I never knew how far someone could be pushed, how dark a good person could get... I never realized until you used the platypus venom."

"It's a completely non-lethal way of incapacitating someone," Chi said defensively.

"Incapacitating via sheer force of pain, pain that can last for as much as a month, with effects that can linger for a lifetime."

"You know what they did to me," Chi said.  His hand now firmly on his right side.  Kim wondered if the scar was still there or if Chi's unique physiology had erased all trace.  "What they took from me."

"I know.  I didn't come here to judge you," Kim said.

"Sorry, I just get... you know."  Chi walked in a small circle.  "I owe you.  Even if you weren't my friend, I'd owe you so much.   Your mother too, for putting it back in.  Thank her again for me when you see her."

"I won't."

Chi's response --"What?"-- was spoken with pure bafflement.

"It's not that I wouldn't tell her, it's that I won't see her," Kim explained.  "The reason is part of why I came here.

"These past few years..." She sighed. "Oh God, _this past decade_... it's forced me to ... bend."

Chi turned away from Kim.  "I milk my own venoms regularly.  The platypus venom is in a jar in the refrigerator labeled, 'Don't drink,' line break, 'No,' comma, 'seriously,' comma, 'do not drink'."

"I didn't come here for venom," Kim said.

"Whatever you need," Chi said.  "But don't expect me to like it any more than you liked watching what I did..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually decided not to look up the term used in _Snow Crash_ and instead work out a word on my own. Then, after I was done writing, I found out that I had come up with the same word used in _Snow Crash_. So my working theory is that Darcy is a _Snow Crash_ fan.
> 
> Sorry about it saying this was complete initially, I forgot to check that it had multiple chapters and a single chapter work with a single chapter is automatically marked as complete for obvious reasons.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kim talks tells about the mission that marked the beginning of her downfall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just some formatting notes:  
> \--a flashback that involves the characters _remembering_ something is in italic and doesn't have a tag to indicate when it took place. A flashback that's there because a character is telling the the story (i.e. not just in their head) is in normal text, but is separated by a major break and has a note as to how long ago it was.
> 
> \--PDVI = Pan-dimensional vortex inducer.
> 
> \--As always, remember "Ch" as in "Christmas" and "i" as in "Hi" when pronouncing Chi's name.

"I came here," Kim said to Chi, who was still facing away from her, "Because you bent more than I would have imagined possible, but were able to get back to normal afterward. I want to know how you did it."

Chi turned back to her, "Well, if you're thinking about that now you're way ahead of where I was."

"I'm not sure," Kim said. "I know that I've done things, and will do things, that I would never normally do. Things that I might never forgive myself for. But I'm going to do them anyway."

"Tortured anyone?" Chi asked.

"No," Kim said.

"Then you're better than I was," Chi said.

"You never--"

"True, but I seem to remember you having to hold me back."

* * *

_"Patrol," Ron whispered, causing the people carrying him to rush to a nearby storage closet._

_"Badical med tech!" Ron said, looking at the contents of the large closet. Chi and Kim left Ron leaning on a wall while they conferred._

_"We're going to need to be careful to get out of here unnoticed," Kim said._

_"I'm not leaving," was Chi's response._

_"Chi, we need to get you and Ron to a hospital."_

_"You take Ron; I have unfinished business here."_

_"I'm not leaving you and Ron's in no condition--"_

_"It's no problem, KP," Ron said, "I've got wheels."_

_Ron was battered, bruised, barely able to stand under his own power, and now sitting in a fairly standard low-cost low-tech folding wheelchair. Kim somehow doubted that in his condition the chair would be enough to solve his problems._

* * *

_The lab was mostly empty. In fact, it looked like there was only one technician present: a man with medium build and no obvious signs that he'd be dangerous was sitting at a computer terminal across the room._

_Kim tried to think of the best interrogation strategy. Chi just rain over to him. Ron followed behind in the wheelchair and called out, "Wait up!" which ruined the element of surprise._

_Chi grabbed on to the technician's chair, and spun it around so fast the man almost fell out of it. He grabbed onto the man and shouted, "Where is it!"_

_The man didn't say anything. Kim thought she saw terror in his eyes._

_"I'm only giving you one more chance before things get messy," Chi said. "I want what they took from me. Now where is it?"_

_The man was clearly immobilized by fear. He wasn't going to be saying anything if Chi didn't give him a moment to calm down. Chi had to see that, right?_

_Chi pulled out something that was silver from the waistband of his pants. A knife? A scalpel? A random piece of metal? Clearly Ron wasn't the only one who found something of value in the closet. "I warned you it would get messy," Chi said._

_Kim realized, almost too late, that Chi wasn't bluffing, she grabbed onto Chi and pulled him back._

_"Chi you don't want to--" Kim had been hit with electric jolts before. She knew the feeling well, and it left her on the ground._

_She was too stunned to even focus on the problem at hand. "Electric eel?" she asked._

_"It's actually a type of knifefish, not an eel," Chi said. His back was still toward her, but at least he wasn't advancing on the technician._

_Her mind slowly coming around she knew this was a good thing, Chi liked to talk about his animal bits. But the part that told her to keep on talking was overruled by indignation, "And you used it against me?"_

_"Don't try to stop me Kim; I won't hold back in a fight."_

_"You'd fight_ me _?"_

_"If I have to."_

_"Chi, I don't know what happened, and I don't know how you're feeling, but--"_

_Chi turned toward her, "You want to know how I feel? Fine. This is how I'm feeling: Salve, nomen mihi est Inego Montoya. Patrum meum interfecisti. Para mori."_

_Ron, who had been silent through all of this, said, "What did they do to you, man?" with genuine horror in his voice._

* * *

"Just once," Kim said. "And that was at the very beginning, before you'd had time to cool down. After that, though, even when you went further than I would ever usually condone, you controlled yourself pretty well."

"You think the platypus venom was me being in control?" Chi asked, a hint of dark amusement in his voice.

"I just want to know how you were able to make it back to normal after," Kim said. "I'm going to do things that I never thought I would do, and cross lines that I swore I'd never cross, but --if at all possible-- I don't want to destroy myself in the process."

"Ever considered not doing those things in the first place," Chi asked.

Kim glared at Chi. He knew that when you're like this, that wasn't an option you'd consider.

"I don't know if there is an answer," Chi said, "but why don't you tell me what's happened so far?" he gestured for her to follow and lead the way to the living room.

"I guess it couldn't hurt," Kim said as she followed.

She sat down on an offered couch.

"Want something to drink?" Chi asked. "I never got around to acquiring the taste of alcohol, so I'm afraid I don't have anything strong enough to befit your situation."

"Something with bite," Kim said.

"Ginger-beer it is," Chi said as he walked to the kitchen. "And root-beer for me so we can both have soft drinks with 'beer' in the name."

When Chi returned, gave her a bottle, and sat on the chair facing her couch, he asked Kim, "When did it start?"

"Ok, so you remember the chaos after the invasion," Kim said.

"Buildings destroyed everywhere, military in shambles, all defense agencies on the ropes for not being able to do a damned thing, insurance companies quoting von Däniken in court so they could argue that aliens are gods and, ergo, an alien invasion constituted an act of god and thus they shouldn't have to pay," Chi said.

"Yeah, Ron and I put off college to join the rebuilding efforts," Kim said. "Drakken and Shego helped out. Apparently Drakken liked the adulation he got for saving the world so much that he intended to make a career out of it.

"It was good and bad at the same time. It felt good to be doing concrete things to help individual people again, not just fighting super-villains, but at the same time the problem was so huge that sometimes I felt completely helpless.

"Shego and I got a lot closer, I never forgot how--"

Chi interrupted by saying, "She felt like a perfect big sister during the Miss Go incident and within a couple days you were already as close to her as Monique who you'd known for two years at that point and Ron who you'd known for twelve and --oh, my god-- it's like the two of you were made to be friends which is why it sucked so much to fight her after that because you couldn't avoid thinking of what fellowship you'd missed by being on opposite sides," very quickly.

"Yeah," Kim said.

"It's not like you weren't going on about it constantly for a month after she stopped subbing in the high school," Chi said.

"I wasn't that bad," Kim said. When she saw Chi's glare she amended, "Well maybe I was, but after the invasion it was a good friendship  _without_  mind control and Shego was able to help me through the down times, and even figure out ways I could do more with what I had."

"How so?" Chi asked.

"It was her idea to reach out to the network of people I'd helped in the past. At first I didn't see the benefit --how much can a cybergentic tick help when you're trying to rebuild the world's infrastructure-- but then progress started to be made.

"I was able to get Mr. Nakasumi to re-task one of his factories to make equipment that could help in reconstruction, having Martin Smarty helping out is always useful-"

"Yeah, a lot of money and the knowledge about how to stretch it as far as it can go," Chi said. "I think I remember some of what he did, actually."

"It was good publicity," Kim said. "I had just gotten some people who worked in robotics and AI to collaborate with Drakken on Robots of whatever-the-opposite-of-Doom-is --and also make sure Drakken didn't sneak in any 'take over the world' programming-- when Team Possible got an urgent call."

"I thought you retired to help with the rebuilding," Chi said.

"We did. And Ron was off with members of the military, again, trying to convince them that --no, really-- he wasn't hiding some kind of glowing blue super-soldier weapon they could use and, yes, the means by which he got his power had been well and truly destroyed.

"But it was a major call. A new villain that didn't play by the usual rules with a weapon of mass destruction primed and ready to use as a demonstration of both the weapon's lethality and his own willingness to kill people, and the demonstration to take place before he even made demands."

"Someone never read the rule book," Chi said.

"Yeah, but it looked like he was going to do a lot of damage before anyone could cry foul so I decided to break my retirement for one mission. Without Ron I thought was going to have to fly solo, but then Shego offered to come with."

Chi took that in for a moment then asked, "Was she doing it because she genuinely wanted to help you, or just because she was bored?"

"A bit of both, I think," Kim said. "It didn't matter. The mission was a disaster. Everything we'd been told was a lie, and by the time we managed to be extracted we'd both been declared terrorists. That made Shego's pardon null and void, and as for me--"

"Wait, wait," Chi said, "Back up a second. What the Hell happened on the mission?"

* * * * * * * * * *  
* Ten Years Ago *  
* * * * * * * * * *

"We should be coming up on the drop zone in thirty seconds," the pilot said. "Are you two ready?"

"Yes," Kim confirmed.

"Just like we were at the one minute mark, and the two minute mark, and the five minute mark," Shego said.

Part of Kim wanted to tell Shego to be nice, but the part that won was the part that wanted to join in, so she said, "And the ten minute mark, and the fifteen minute mark, and the twenty minute mark..."

Shego shot her a grin. Kim smiled in return. They still had fifteen seconds before jumping.

They passed in silence. The two still looking at each other, Shego still grinning, Kim still smiling.

The jump was uneventful.

The landing placed them just outside of an alpine lair. It wasn't precisely on a mountain top, but it was on the highest point around. Fortunately they'd landed pretty close and thus could avoid most of the climb.

As Kim surveyed the site, had a sense of déjà vu, and said, "I feel like I've been here before."

"You have," Shego said. "It's a time share lair. You came here when Drakken stole the panoptic gizmo."

"The Eye of Panoptes," Kim corrected, making sure that it wasn't in a condescending way.

"Yeah, that's what I said."

Kim groaned. "No you--"

Shego tackled Kim. The two rolled over a small ridge in the landscape and landed in a depression. Kim let out an, "Oof."

Once Kim would have assumed this was Shego's inevitable betrayal. These days, though... she waited for an explanation.

"Sniper" Shego whispered. She pointed.

Kim looked where Shego indicated, quickly so as not to present a good target, and saw that there was indeed an outbuilding that appeared to be made for sniping and  _something_ , which might have been a scope, glinting in the sun.

"That wasn't there before," Kim said, once her whole body safely back below the ridge.

"Of course not, villains don't use bullets and they certainly don't use snipers. If you can't defeat your opponent with ray guns, stun batons, or something else equally villain-approved then you don't deserve to win and the entire villainous community will be sure to let you know." Then Shego grinned widely and maliciously, "Each villain in their own personal way."

Kim nodded.

"Lends credence to the idea that this guy doesn't play by the rules, and might actually kill a lot of people," Kim said. "I need a closer look."

"Electro-binoculars?" Shego asked.

"Please and thank you," Kim said.

Shego made a grunt of disgust, but gave Kim the binoculars.

"Now, how do I use these without getting my head blown off?" Kim asked.

"Give me your compact and close your left eye," Shego said.

"What?!"

Shego repeated the exact same words more slowly, "Give me your compact and close your--"

"I'm left eye dominant," Kim said when she figured out what Shego was getting at.

"Fine, close your right eye."

Kim looked straight ahead through the binoculars, without poking her head above the ridge. Shego used Kim's compact, and her own, to form a makeshift periscope. All that was put at risk was one of Shego's hands.

"It's strange," Kim said.

"Yeah?"

"It looks like a sniper's perch, but I think it's set up for surveillance only."

"That doesn't make sense," Shego said, "If they were monitoring a feed from there for security purposes only, they'd have seen us and alarms would be blaring."

"Well, I don't think it's an immediate threat," Kim said, then she stood up and offered Shego a hand. Shego took it. When they were both on their feet, Kim said, "We keep going?"

"Yeah," Shego said, "but I don't like it."

"Any ideas about what approach we should take?"

"Princess, if that was surveillance then they know we're coming," Shego said, "So none of that vent-crawling crap."

"Just waltz through the front door?"

"I seem to remember you punching a hole through our wall once," Shego said. "When we weren't even doing anything."

"I can't do that anymore," Kim said. Shego shot her a look that made her feel stupid for stating the obvious.

"I can," Shego said.

* * *

The front door was a massive metal door, it stood no chance against Shego. It warped, the frame buckled, and the whole thing crashed to the floor inside the lair.

Then silence.

Kim knew something was very wrong. She scanned the area for any signs of traps, but found none. Henchmen should be swarming at them after an entrance like that. If it weren't a trap, why weren't they?

"Think it's everyone's day off?" Kim asked.

Shego just snorted.

"This feels wrong," Kim said as they walked through the empty lair.

"Very wrong," Shego agreed. She was looking at the floors, the walls, she popped her head into some of the rooms. "This place isn't in use," she eventually concluded.

"You think we got bad intel?" Kim asked.

"Bad doesn't begin to describe it, pumpkin," Shego said. "Everything here is as clean as it's ever been. No one has walked on these floors, no on has leaned on a wall, no one has slept in the beds, the kitchen is pristine, there's not a smudge or a fingerprint anywhere ... there's no way that there could be a major operation going on here."

"But how could you possibly think there's a PDVI powered weapon of mass destruction charged up when there isn't?" Kim asked. "Readings like that can't come out of nowhere."

"We'll check the main lab," Shego said cautiously. She pointed the way, "But this goes beyond 'trap-trap'," she said with air quotes. "This place has been scrubbed for evidence, and no one has been in it since."

"Maybe the weapon's on a remote system?" Kim offered, but she didn't believe it herself. Had someone fooled Global Justice?

* * *

"Well, I guess we found everyone," Shego said when they reached the lair. Henches were laying on the floor as if they'd passed out at their stations. "Think someone dropped your lip gloss into the ventilation system?"

Kim considered it, the knock out gas she concealed in fake lip-gloss containers could have rendered them all unconscious before they had time from to leave their posts. Still...

"Something else wrong, Kimmie," Shego said.

Kim just waited for the explanation, rather than respond.

"These are Jack's men, bonafide HenchCo henchmen," Shego said. "They'd never go along with the plan we're here to stop."

"Maybe that's why they're," Kim gestured.

"Maybe," Shego said, but Kim could tell she didn't believe it. "You wake one of them up and find out what happened here; I'll check on our doomsday device."

How Kim woke up the henches would depend on what condition they were in, so she went to check the pulse of the nearest one to get some idea. It was odd. She didn't usually have this much difficulty locating the carotid artery. She switched to his hand and barely noticed when Shego said, "This makes no sense."

With a sinking feeling, Kim realized that she wasn't actually having difficulty. She ran to another hench to verify. Then she looked up at Shego in a panic to find Shego looking at her in the exact same way. Each shouted, "Run!" to the other.

They barely made it out of the lab before something exploded behind them. As it was the shock wave knocked them off their feet and Kim could barely hear her own thoughts over the ringing in her ears.

She and Shego helped each other to their feet as they continued to make for the exit of the lair, which was coming down around them, it seemed like they never gained any ground on the collapse, they were always mere moments ahead of it, forced to run as fast as they could, lest it overtake them.

When they were finally out they collapsed into the snow gasping for breath.

Shego asked, "How did you know?" between gasps.

For a while Kim was silent, then she said, "They weren't knocked out, they ... they ... they were dead."

"Damn," Shego said. She started to get to her feet and said, "Makes me feel a little better about having to leave them behind, though."

Shego offered Kim a hand, Kim took it.

Once Kim was on her feet she asked, "How did  _you_  know?"

"It wasn't a doomsday device or an evil ray or," Shego inhaled deeply, "anything like that. It only had enough actual tech in it to look like one to someone sifting through the wreckage."

Kim nodded, "Meaning they planned on there being wreckage."

Shego nodded.

"Kimmie," Shego said, genuine concern in her voice, "someone tried to assassinate you."

"What?" Kim said in shock.

"You go on a mission to save the world, it goes horribly wrong, you die in the lair, none of the henches survive to tell the tale," Shego said. "It's why the place was so clean; the destruction will mean it's not  _suspiciously_  clean anymore, but the cleaning means there will be no evidence of who really set it up."

"But I retired," Kim said.

"Everyone knows that was temp--" Shego stopped when she saw something behind Kim. "Kimmie?"

Kim turned and saw that there were a lot of people, in uniforms she didn't recognize, coming up the slope towards the ruined lair, Shego, and herself.

"Could be the local authorities," Kim said, but she she was sure her voice betrayed the fact that even she thought that was a false hope.

"With that response time?" Shego asked. Kim said nothing. Shego said, "Could be they're coming to finish the job."

Kim nodded.

"You still snowboard?"

That caused Kim to whip her head around to look straight at Shego in utter confusion. Shego didn't say anything, but she cut two makeshift boards from the wreckage of the lair.

Soon the two were headed toward the nearest trees. It was difficult without proper bindings. But Kim and Shego were up to the task.

* * * * * *  
* Present *  
* * * * * *

"The plan was just to make it to the  _real_  local authorities," Kim said, "but they found us first. And they shot first and asked questions  _never_." Kim paused a moment. "After that we didn't trust anyone and were on the run from everyone for a few weeks." Kim said. "Finally we managed to commandeer a secure line and call up Global Justice's new director himself."

When Chi looked confused Kim asked, "What?"

"Sorry, nothing," Chi said. "Sometimes I forget how quickly they managed to oust Dr. Director."

"The Lorwardian sitch was the only reason they could do it," Kim said. "'How can it be Global Justice if it can't defend the globe?' and all that."

"You think someone could have smacked them with a dictionary and explained that Justice is meted out after the fact," Chi said.

"Everything was happening so fast back then," Kim said.

"Yeah, these days it seems like it's ground to a halt, everyone settled into the new normal."

"Not for me," Kim said.

"Of course," Chi said. "Sorry. Not for you. But why did you have to commandeer a line, why not use the Kimmunicator?"

"There was a secondary blast in the lair, some kind of EMP or something like it. All of our circuitry was fried," Kim thought back to it a bit then smiled. "Shego was  **not** happy about losing her mp3 player."

"Ok, so you get in touch with incompetent figurehead, and get an extraction," Chi said.

"And are immediately charged with murder, espionage, and theft."

"Come again?"

"They offered a deal where it would be bumped down to excessive force --they blamed the dead henches on us-- even said they'd make  _everything_  go away if we told them where we hid the PDVI--"

"Was there even one there in the first place?"

"Nope," Kim said.

"As for the espionage," Kim said, "provided that the terms of our punishment included prohibition from dealing with people with security clearance above a certain level, they said they'd leave it off the books."

"How did they even come up with espionage?" Chi asked.

"They said," Kim started. Then she found there was nothing there. "I don't even remember what they said.

"It didn't matter, the charges were all bull-pucky anyway," Kim said. "They just had evidence on their side. A lair full of dead bodies to blame on us --nothing that could support our claims it was an assassination attempt and the henches were already dead when we got there-- the fact that we ran, the supposedly missing PDVI which we  _must_  have stolen because no one else left the lair."

"Did you know it was a set up at the time?" Chi asked.

"Honestly?" Kim shrugged. "No. I thought that we were being framed by someone other than GJ and GJ was just being duped."

"How did they get you to agree to the bargain instead of having you insist on your day in court?"

"They played Shego and me off each other," Kim said. "The only way to not have my entire reputation destroyed and my life irreparably damaged, they'd told her, was for her to agree to their terms. She didn't realize Global Justice was in on it either. She just assumed that they were exploiting the opportunity that fell in their lap to finally deal with her --they'd wanted her out of play forever-- so she thought that if she went along with it I'd be ok.

"By agreeing to the terms of the prison sentence they offered her, Shego kept me out of jail and, she thought, in range of a normal life.

"For me they just pointed out that we were in a GJ complaint country where the death penalty was legal, Shego would never win a trial, and that for all her powers she can't dodge bullets. By agreeing to the terms of the probation they offered me, I was able to keep Shego in a non-horrible prison, as prisons go, and keep her safe," Kim said.

"If either of us broke the terms, the other lost their deal."

"So Shego couldn't escape because that would screw you over, and you couldn't break your deal because that would screw her over?" Chi asked.

"Pretty much," Kim said.

"Who needs locks when they can just threaten someone you care about?" Chi asked. It was rhetorical and Kim knew it.

"I need a refill," Kim said. Chi took her empty ginger-beer bottle, along with his empty rootbeer one and left the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, first off, I thought I already posted this here. Three months ago. Oops and sorry.
> 
> Second, "Salve, nomen mihi est Inego Montoya. Patrum meum interfecisti. Para mori," translates to, "Hello, my name is Inego Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die," but you probably already guessed that.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kim tells about her life after being put on probation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another installment that should have been posted ages ago. The bad news is that it's the last such installment, which means that there won't be more until I write more which could take some time since I have a lot on my plate at the moment.
> 
> As always, remember "Ch" as in "Christmas" and "i" as in "Hi" when pronouncing "Chi".

Chi returned with fresh bottles of ginger-beer and root-beer.

Once he'd given Kim her drink and he was sitting with his, he said, "Ok, so you and Shego both thought that someone, not GJ, tried to kill you and, when that failed, tried to frame you for murdering a bunch of henchmen and assorted other charges."

"Yeah," Kim said.

"You thought that Global Justice had been fooled by the framing and genuinely believed you were guilty, while Shego thought that Global Justice didn't care about what happened and was exploiting the situation to make her agree to stay in prison."

"Yup," Kim said.

"So when did you realize that that wasn't the way things were?"

"Pretty soon after Shego and I were separated," Kim said. "Once we were apart our only method of communication was through letters that were read and censored by … I don't even know. Whoever the authorities in charge were. A lot of the legwork in keeping me in line with my probation was done by GJ, but I'm not convinced that they were the ones really behind everything."

"So, what? After you can't tell Shego whether they're following through on their end of things they reneged?"

"Nothing so … obviously evil," Kim said. "They just …" Kim waved a hand in the air as she looked for the right word, "elucidated the exact extent of the probation I'd agreed to. Couldn't leave Middleton without special permission, I'd understood that. Communications outside of Middleton would have to be monitored which meant that all of my mail, not just the mail to Shego, went through them. I hadn't quite understood that, but no big.

"The big was on what exactly it meant to not have contact with anyone of a certain security clearance. The work I'd been doing on reconstruction? A lot of it had to be cut off. The most benefit was coming from the robotics program because the robots could do a lot of the major infrastructure reconstruction we needed, but the head programmer--"

"Who?" Chi asked. "Out of curiosity."

"Dr. Porter was in charge of programming, with help from Dr. Freeman, while Dr. Drakken handled the construction."

"Thanks," Chi said. "And sorry about the interruption."

"The impression I'd had was that I would be prohibited from contacting people with relatively high security clearances, in fact any clearance, no matter how low, meant that if I contacted them it would be a violation of my probation and it would be considered to have compromised them pending investigation. Exceptions were made for my family, who I was allowed to stay with until I turned twenty-one, and Ron, because he was my boyfriend."

"Ron had a clearance level?"

"Being classified as an independent contractor for the US military was the only way he could get people to leave him alone and stop trying to draft him as their personal super soldier."

"Fun," Chi said flatly.

"Even with the classification he still had to deal with a lot of people interested in military applications, which was why he wasn't on the mission that led to all of it."

Chi nodded. "You said; I remember"

"Anyway, having the authorities monitor our every interaction ruined our relationship just as effectively as keeping us apart would have, not that there weren't some cracks showing already."

Chi looked like he was about to say something, but then didn't. Good. Kim didn't need to hear someone talk about the problems he had seen and she had missed in that chapter of her life.

"After we broke up he left the country and, as far as I know, disappeared," Kim said. "I don't blame him.

"Most of the kids in our class went off to college, I had applied to schools in Venice, Hong-Kong, and London. All accepted. Couldn't get an exemption to leave Middleton for any of them. A whole lot of other schools accepted me without me even asking. No exceptions made for them either."

"Middleton Community College?" Chi asked.

"Completely demolished by the invasion," Kim said. She sighed. "but it was a lot worse than just that.

"The security clearance thing really was the worst of it. It changed every aspect of my life. It extended to 'indirect contact' which meant no Felix because of his mom…"

"No Zita because Felix?" Chi asked.

"Yup. Once you looked through all of the clearances and interconnections there was basically no one still around that I could talk to," Kim said. "Monique had gone to Florence, Justine got into a top-secret lab the moment she graduated, Tara was off in the Midwest somewhere, the list went on."

"So they left you completely isolated except for your family?" Chi asked.

"I only got to keep my family for a few years, but they kept me sane during them," Kim said. "I made the best of things. Once the community college was rebuilt I went there. None of things I really wanted to pursue were being offered, so I opted for self-improvement instead. I took cooking classes."

Chi looked surprised and she didn't blame him. Her lack of cooking ability had become legendary. It was much overstated, but even with Ron as her personal tutor all she'd managed to do was make the equipment function properly instead of splattering the room.

"There was money," Kim said, "because of my parents' jobs, but I never really managed to do anything that was like a career building.

"The censored letters that Shego and I traded back and forth quickly became entirely personal because if either of us mentioned anything else it was redacted from the copy the other read.

"I feel like we got close --really close-- but it's hard to be sure when you never  _ever_  see the other person in person." Kim stopped for a moment. "That sounded weird."

"Just a bit," Chi said.

"Anyway," Kim said, "I do know that she helped me stay grounded, stay sane, and I learned more about her through those letters than any government report I'd ever read on her. Than every report combined, in fact.

"And then..." Kim closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. She tried not to cry.

"Hey," Chi said, "It's getting late and you could probably use a real bed after what you've been through."

Kim just nodded. "The guest room is this way," he said leading her into the hall.

* * *

Kim started to notice odd things. Monique, Felix and Zita, were all still high school age. Ron was only about a year older. The difference wouldn't even be noticeable to anyone without Kim's day-in day-out experience with Ron, even then it was only because that particular year had taken a toll that most years had not. Shego was several years older than she had been when the others were their respective ages.

The beach they were all lounging on was an amalgam of beaches Kim had been at in her career as globe trotting hero.

In short, she was apparently dreaming. That or in some mad scientist's brain altering machine. But most likely dreaming.

The scenery melted away.

She was cast into a memory. No surprise which one. They'd been talking about that day, hadn't they? It was a memory of the day that had brought her here.

She was back in the lab. Chi was between her and the technician, facing the tech. She had to separate them. Chi was on the verge of doing something he could never take back and would never forgive himself for.

She'd managed to stop him once, but parts of her body hadn't shaken off the zap that had gotten her. She tried to reason with him, he turned toward her and the look in his eyes was one that she'd never been able to classify. Too cold to be rage, too motivated to be indifference even if that was all he seemed to have toward his usual moral inhibitions, nothing so simple as hate, but neither was it overly complex.

It shook her. It had shaken her at the time, it shook her now, but now there was the added factor that she knew she'd had the same look in her own eyes several times of late. She still didn't have a name for it.

When Chi spoke it was equally difficult to classify, about all that she could pull out of it for sure was annoyance at being delayed and also  _pain_  that had been honed into a need for retribution. His words unnerved her more, "You want to know how I feel? Fine. This is how I'm feeling: Salve, nomen mihi est Inego Montoya. Patrum meum interfecisti. Para mori."

He was ready to fully devote his life to a twenty year quest to murder the six fingered man, metaphorically of course. Chi didn't have a father.

Kim had all but forgotten about Ron, he'd been silent since Chi got to the technician. He broke that silence by asking the question in Kim's mind, "What did they do to you, man?"

"They cut out my lower right lateral brain," Chi said. Then he turned back to the technician and added, "And I Want It Back."

"How many brains do you have?" Ron asked.

"One fewer than I'm supposed to have!" Chi shouted over his shoulder. Focusing on the technician again he said, "How about I rip out a fistful of your gray matter and see how you like it?"

On another day Chi would have talked about how giving a human being extra or enhanced senses didn't mean much without adding more processing power to interpret that input. He would have talked about how the people who dreamed him up wanted processing on a level even the animals they stole designs from lacked. He'd have talked about how even a mantis shrimp doesn't use all the information that mantis shrimp eyes collect.

He'd have talked about the modifications to other organs that had been necessary to shove extra brains, small though they were, in body that looked human on the outside. He'd have talked about which species had been drawn on to make the brains get along and form a single semi-decentralized nervous system. He'd have joked about how the insult "bird brained" resembled him.

For someone who looked down on his creators as horrible people with limited imagination, Chi was very proud of the way his body was put together. It was a source of fascination to him that he was more than willing to share with anyone who knew his secret, even if what he ended up sharing was only tangentially related to the conversation before that.

But that day was different. All he cared about was getting "it" back. He'd tried to resort to actually hurting someone for information in spite of being completely opposed to such practices  _and_  being well aware that the results of torture were extremely shoddy at best.

He'd actually used some of his unique physiology against Kim herself.

That day was different.

The technician told them everything he knew. There was no need for violence, fear was enough.

* * *

Chi had offered Kim whatever she wanted from the guestroom's bureaus, explaining that he kept them stocked in hopes of serving whomever might drop by. He even quoted Ron, "You never know, you know?"

Clean clothes were a luxury she hadn't had in what felt like ages, and she ended up in cargo pants and a t-shirt. Then she ventured out of the room and had little trouble finding the kitchen

"Good morning," Chi said when she walked in.

"Good morning," Kim said in return.

"For breakfast we have dead pig," Chi pointed at back bacon, "dead pig," he pointed at streaky bacon, "and scrambled eggs from local ducks," he pointed at eggs.

"What are duck eggs like?" Kim asked as she sat.

"Well these ones are from ducks that are on the same diet as the chickens they live with, so more like chicken eggs than wild duck eggs would," Chi said. "Though they are free range, so there's probably some pond scum in their diet."

"You really know how to make a wonderful looking breakfast sound unappetizing," Kim said, taking some eggs and streaky bacon.

"I do what I can," Chi said while cutting his back bacon into more manageable pieces. "How did you sleep?"

"In a bed," Kim said. "I feel like I owe you all the favors in the world for that."

"You've done a hell of a lot more for me," Chi said, "but we're friends, which means that you wouldn't owe me anything even if you hadn't done anything for me." Chi took a bite of back bacon. "At least, I think that's what friendship is about."

"It's something like that," Kim said.

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Then Kim sighed and said, "I had a dream about when we were in that lab after they …" Kim gestured to Chi, "You know."

Chi seemed lost for a bit, but then Kim saw realization wash over his face, "Oh.  _That_  lab."

"I know what happened to me isn't remotely the same as what happened to you," Kim said, "but I had another dream about it."

"I had a dream about artichoke," Chi said in an upbeat conversational tone, as if they weren't talking about his darkest days or the fact Kim was currently in hers. "Wait, is the plural 'artichoke' or 'artichokes'?"

"Are we talking discrete plants, or mashed up to be used as an ingredient or some such?" Kim asked.

"Whole plants."

"'Artichokes'."

"Oh," Chi said, "well, then, I had a dream about artichokes."

"Fascinating, I'm sure," Kim said in a flat tone. Though she did have to admit that Chi had defused the potentially depressing and definitely fraught route the conversation might have taken.

"Actually, it was pretty boring," Chi said. "Anyway, you came here about state of mind and future action and whatnot, right?"

"Yeah," Kim said.

"Then the difference in what happened isn't what matters," Chi said, "though I do still want to hear the story. I think it might help, even. But what matters is where you are mentally, and that could be the same even if things were completely different."

"You're not as reassuring as you think you are," Kim said, "But thanks."

"Like I said," Chi said, "I do what I can."

* * *

After breakfast Chi dumped the dishes in the sink, said he'd get back to them later, and walked with Kim to the living room.

"So," Chi said, "story time, watch a movie -- _Bricks of Fury Eye Eye Nose Eye Ear Eye_ \--"

Kim laughed, a real genuine laugh, for the first time in so long she didn't remember, and then said, "Ron was never  _that_  bad at roman numerals."

"If you say so," Chi said. "Question stands: story time, movie, or something else?"

Kim thought it over.

"Story time."

* * *

"When you think about it," Kim said, "when you can't communicate about the details of your situation, current events, or anything external that has any value, your options are to either have your conversation be meaningless or extremely meaningful.

"Ron and I broke up because redacted and I feel like I'll be alone forever, plus I was already feeling bad because redacted," Kim said, as if that had actually been a letter she sent. "You can't respond to that by talking about meaningless details, because you're not allowed to know the details, you can either give up or address the emotions directly.

"Shego and I chose to do the second. We ended up sending a lot of letters back and forth about how we felt, how we saw each other, how we felt about each other, non-classified interests and hobbies, and just stuff that's usually surrounded by minutiae."

"Makes sense," Chi said. "So much of what people say is just chatter--"

"There's nothing wrong with detail and small talk," Kim said.

"No," Chi said, "nothing at all. But it does put the breaks on getting to know someone --who they really are-- if you're more concerned about the juicy details of 'redacted' instead of what's going on in them because of 'redacted'."

"Maybe," Kim said, "I think that details matter too. Shego told me some parts of her past, before the comet and thus not redacted, and I think that the detail gave me a much better understanding of her than I would have if she'd been forced into abstraction."

"Hey, you're the one who said the lack of details made it--"

"I can contradict myself," Kim said, "I contain multitudes."

" _And_  now we're quoting poetry," Chi said. "I get what you mean though. At least I think I do. You couldn't get distracted by the flood of detail in the now, but you could talk about the details that mattered enough to remember from the past, provided they weren't classified. Right?"

Kim nodded.

"It wasn't a good life," Kim said, "but I had my family to help me out in person, and my correspondence with Shego to help keep me stable.

"Then I turned twenty one," Kim said. "They kicked me out on the street the moment it officially happened. If I hadn't been a nighttime baby I would been prohibited from seeing my family before they even gave me a party."

Chi seemed to try, repeatedly, to respond to that. If he was indeed trying, then every attempt ended in failure.

"My dad did too much classified work at the space center for them to let me contact him," Kim said.

"And everyone else was considered indirect contact with him," Chi said.

"Pretty much," Kim said, "though I think they also had something about my mom being cleared to operate on high value patients."

"And the bullshit continues," Chi said. A moment later he amended, "Sorry, forgot who I was talking to. Bull-pucky."

Kim shrugged, "Words may hurt more than sticks and stones, but I think profanity is the least of my concerns."

"So you're out on your own," Chi said, "considered a security risk so you can't get a job that really uses your unique skill-set--"

"I tried to join the circus," Kim said, "but then I was reminded of the travel restrictions."

"Damn," Chi said. "because you're right, you'd fit wonderfully into a circus. All those flourishes that your enemies never appreciated would have been a huge hit with the audience."

"They were," Kim said. "I couldn't join a circus, but I did manage to get temporary jobs whenever there was one in Middleton." Kim smiled at two things. The first was how such times had been bright points in her life. The second was at what her dad would think if he'd known she'd been comporting about with circus folk. "All of the best times I had at that time were when a circus was in town."

"So what did you do for regular work?" Chi asked.

"Smarty Mart," Kim said.

"But you had a history with Club Banana."

"It turns out," Kim said, "Club Banana patrons are easily frightened off when government enforcers show up to make sure an employee isn't making unauthorized contact with certain individuals under cover of doing retail work, but Smarty Mart customers don't give a damn --yes, I am capable of swearing-- as long as the prices are low."

"Ok, you turned twenty one, what, six years years ago now?" Chi asked.

"Seven," Kim said.

"So I'm guessing a lot of sh-- stuff," when Kim raised an eyebrow, Chi stopped. A moment later, "Right, swearing acceptable zone. A lot of shit's happened to you since then, right?"

"Right," Kim said. "I'd already learned to not even try to make friends--"

"I think you skipped that part, Kim," Chi said.

"Well, it was simple enough to make sure that I wasn't in contact with people above my clearance level that I know because my overseers had a blacklist of such people already made, but when I started having contact with someone not in my file they needed to check that the person isn't above my, non-existent, clearance level," Kim said.

"As it turns out, subjecting someone to a full and detailed interrogation and background check by government goons is not, in fact, a good way to break the ice."

"So," Chi said. "No new friends, no old friends."

"Yeah," Kim said. "Pretty much all I had was my contact with Shego, and that only because it had been a condition of the original deal that she flat out demanded, and occasional temporary circus work."

"And then what went wrong?" Chi asked gently, and tried to hide emotions beyond that but Kim could tell he was dreading the answer. He was decent at keeping things he didn't want to be known hidden, but not to friends.

"I adapted to the new normal, no friends, basically no human contact outside of work, a cruddy apartment, a TV. A computer that had been butchered to make it impossible to go online –-the alternative was to make it so GJ could monitor every keystroke.

"But I had a bed, and I had my incarcerated pen pal Shego.

"That was pretty much all I had. I had to watch my brothers' high school graduation through binoculars because if I were actually on the grounds I might" Kim switched to a hushed tone, " _contact them_.

"Then, maybe a year and a half into adapting to life without human contact save for, 'Welcome to Smarty Mart, where smart shoppers shop smart,' and the occasional small time, Middleton size circus, I finally had something I was really looking forward to.

"A major circus was coming to town for a full month and they actually sent someone ahead to ask me if I could play a major role in some of their acts. Not me begging to be let in and given a chance in a supporting spot, them actually giving me a chance to really shine.

"They gave me video --VHS because passing DVDs was a no-no-- of the act they wanted to do so I could prepare, at least as much as possible without being with the other performers. At that point in my life, it was like a dream job.

"This was all about five and a half years ago," Kim said. "I'm sure of that because I was in prison for five years, and I got out about six months ago."

Chi's eyes went wide, "Prison!?"

"Don't skip ahead," Kim said. "It's my story and we're telling it in my order."

"But can't we skip ahead to the fire swamp?" Chi said, mock pouting.

Kim smiled despite herself; it was good to be around a friend again. "No, but I promise there are no kissing parts."

Chi tilted his head in acknowledgment.

"The night before the circus came I was out on a run --part of how I stayed sane with no one to talk to-- and I heard a massive explosion. I ran to the sound and found myself at the edge of my allowed territory, just out of reach there was a building on fire."

"You had to know it was a set up," Chi said.

Kim nodded, "Yeah, yeah I did. I was starring at a the border between gravel and grass that marked, more or less, the bound of my probation as if it were the edge of a cliff. I hated myself for not running to help right away, but I was afraid too."

"Not for yourself," Chi said. "People may change, but it would take centuries to change you enough to make it so it was yourself you were fearing for when there might be people in danger."

"For Shego," Kim said. "I break my probation, she doesn't get the good prison anymore. And it wasn't entirely selfless. It felt like Shego was all I had then. Cross that line and I was throwing away the only thing, the only person, that I had left.

"I was frozen to the spot, paralyzed by fear."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
* Five And A Half Years Ago *  
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Kim couldn't tell if the explosion had been an actual bomb or a broken gas main. Either way, there was an inferno and one building in particular was both definitely occupied and impossible for the people inside to escape.

Almost everything inside screamed at her to run over to help. Almost. She knew about the hole they'd throw Shego in if she broke her probation.

There was hope for the people. The fire department here had a great response time and they were absurdly competent. You had to be in the tri-city area since you never knew when a swarm of giant cockroaches or some such might attack.

Maybe she didn't need to help. She knew this was a trap.

It wasn't just that there was a 'random' explosion precisely when her run took her closest to that spot, it was also that the border here was completely clear so she couldn't pretend she left the area accidentally. There was grass on the Middleton side, the side she had to stay on, and gravel on the other. The moment she stepped onto the gravel the deal was over and Shego was damned by her actions.

Nothing she'd ever faced from an evil scientist or would-be overlord hurt as much as this moment, right now. To know that there were people in danger and not help... it felt like her insides were being torn apart.

Then she heard the sirens. Thank God. She saw the fire trucks, and her heart soared. It was as if she were floating, the relief was so great.

Then the trucks stopped. Why had they stopped? They weren't close enough for the water from their hoses to reach the building, much less evacuate anyone.

And that was when Kim realized that the explosion had made the street impassible. Several firefighters jumped out and took portable ladders off the trucks and made their way forward on foot, the trucks retreated, presumably to find another way around. Kim knew the roads in this area. The layout was terrible. By the time they made it, it would be too late.

They'd need to manually evacuate everyone in the building, and they'd need every available person to do it.

Kim took one last look at the line between gravel and grass. The line she would doom Shego by crossing.

* * * * * *  
* Present *  
* * * * * *

"I crossed the line. When I still thought the fire might be stopped, there was indecision, but there were people in that building and I knew that one person more or less in the rescue operation could mean lives saved or lost.

"I chose to throw away my future, and Shego's too," she said, "and I was worried that my indecision might have made it too late anyway."

"You didn't choose," Chi said.

That threw Kim so much that all she managed was a "What!?" that was far louder than she had intended.

"Some decisions we make, and some are made for us by the people we've become," Chi said. "Our ethos."

"I took Latin, not Greek," Kim said.

"It means character. It means the person you are, and the person you are could no more choose to abandon people in that situation than you could choose to sprout wings and fly," Chi said. Then closed his eyes and moved his head from side to side, a mannerism Kim recognized as him thinking something over. "Actually, the sprouting wings thing might be easier.

"Anyway, we get to decide the kind of people we're going to be with every choice we make," Chi said, "but that act takes away other, later, choices. The kind of person you've consistently chosen to be, Kim, is the kind of person who has no choice in situations like that. You have to help people. You can choose to change who you are, but that kind of change doesn't come quickly enough to leave people to burn in a fire."

"Very philosophical," Kim said.

"I've already told you that most of my income comes from being intellectually stimulating to someone with money to pay for that sort of thing," Chi said.

"I never would have predicted Bonnie would care that much about something like that," Kim said.

"That was my initial thinking too," Chi said. "Then I tried to imagine what it must be like to live on an island with Junior. I quickly stopped trying to imagine that, decided I didn't want to know, and decided to take her money without examining her motivation."

"Good decision," Kim said. She sighed. "Anyway, the building was a six unit apartment building on the Lowerton side of the Middleton-Lowerton border. Most of the neighborhood had been condemned or foreclosed."

"Right, this was after the housing crash," Chi said.

"Yeah," Kim said. "Though that actually put more people in apartments and fewer in houses."

"Sorry," Chi said. "Sometimes I see patterns where none exist."

"Anyway," Kim said, "I ran to help the rescue efforts."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
* Five And A Half Years Ago *  
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Get back," one of the firefighters said to Kim.

"I can help," She said.

"No, you can get yourself killed," the firefighter said, more loudly. "Leave this to the professionals."

"That's right," another said, "we don't need civ- Kim Possible?"

Kim nodded.

"It's lucky you're here," the second firefighter said. Kim didn't think it was lucky. Kim thought that the only reason there were people in danger in the first place was because of her. The firefighter continued, "We've got a bad situation on our hands-"

"Boss?" the first firefighter asked.

"No time," 'Boss' said. "She's  **not**  a civilian and we'll probably need her."

The entire ground floor of the building was burning too hot to approach. The siding on the buildings on either side was was being warped by that heat. There was no way they could get into the building with the ground ladders.

"Amanda," 'Boss' said, "what's the situation?"

A firefighter who had run ahead without carrying anything, Amanda presumably, said, "We can't go between the buildings; I had to run around that one," she pointed to one of the buildings next to the burning one, "Just to scout the back. It's as bad as here out front.

"I've never seen a building fire this perfectly distributed before," Amanda said. "I think it has to be arson, Drake."

Apparently "Drake" was 'Boss's name. He said, "That's not our concern, we just have to get the people out and then stop it from spreading."

After a moment, Amanda asked, "Who's she?"

"Kim Possible," Drake said.

Kim tuned out a bit as she tried to assess the situation. They had ladders, but couldn't get close enough to use them. Without the trucks they were limited to the height of the ground ladders which wasn't that high. A hose had been brought and was being hooked up to a hydrant now. If they were lucky the water supply to the hydrant survived the blast, but it wouldn't put the fire out, all it could do would be to slow it down and, maybe, prevent it from spreading to other buildings.

"I thought she retired," Kim heard Amanda say.

Kim responded with, "I did," automatically. She was still looking for solutions.

This area hadn't been built with room to stretch your legs in mind, that meant the buildings were packed close. The fire stood a good chance of spreading and that would make it even... wait, the buildings were packed close.

Kim scanned the upper floors of the burning building and the buildings on either side. All they needed were well placed windows.

"Drake, Amanda!" Kim called the only two names she knew. "Could we put a ladder there," she pointed to a spot on the second floor between burning building and the one on the right where the windows lined up, she hoped, enough for it to work, "and use it as bridge?"

Amanda said, "That might work, but we'd be very close to the ground floor flames."

"We'll concentrate the hose there," Drake said; "try to keep it open."

"It could be a death sentence anyway," Amanda said. "I'll lead."

"I'll oversee the hose crew, you take whoever will go with you into the building," Drake said. "Volunteers only."

When people signed up to be a firefighter they signed up to put their lives on the line, but Kim knew that they were also trained when not to help because the risk to themselves was too great.

Kim joined the rescue crew.

While it didn't have the heat of the fire on the first floor, the second floor was definitely burning and also filled with smoke. The hose had given them a somewhat safe entry point, but that was the only thing that was even somewhat safe.

The firefighters worked in pairs and Amanda sent each pair to search a different part of the building. Kim stayed on the second floor. She kicked in doors, inhaled more smoke than was healthy, and was soon bringing a family of three to the ladder they were using as a bridge. A firefighter had stayed behind on the other side of the ladder to hold it steady, she held her side steady, and one at a time the family made their way to safety.

When Kim headed back into the building's interior, she passed Amanda and others leading another party of survivors.

Amanda told her, "This floor's clear, the first is inaccessible."

Kim went up to the the third floor and found that there were four families there. The fire had prevented the first floor families from escaping, definitely arson for that to be true, and they'd simply gone up.

They weren't a problem. The problem was that one of the third floor families had a kid who liked to play hide and seek but had a habit of falling asleep while hiding.

Kim spent most of the rest of the evacuation trying to find that child, by the time she did there was only one family, the child's family, left to be evacuated, but they were all trapped.

The stairs had collapsed.

Kim thought about what she would have given to have her hairdryer grappling launcher right then. And then she made one. A couple of butchered fans for the engine to reel it back in if she screwed up, Christmas lights for the cord, and aerosol cans for propellant. When she broke off their tops they shot out of the window dragging the Christmas lights behind them.

On the ground, Drake ordered everyone to stop what they were doing and, apparently, search for something. Kim couldn't hear from where she was.

Things became apparent when Drake tied a rope to the Christmas lights and signaled Kim to pull it back up. Kim used the fans and soon was securing the rope, several firefighters were holding it at the other end, and all that remained was to send the family down it in improvised zip-line harnesses.

Kim was the last to go, and when she landed everyone on the ground celebrated. The building was an inferno, and starting to collapse, but nobody had died. Only Kim knew what this day would mean for a woman in a faraway jail cell.

* * * * * *  
* Present *  
* * * * * *

"We searched the surrounding buildings," Kim said, "for fear the fire would spread to them, but no one was living in any of them."

"The firemen and families called me a hero," Kim said. "Other authorities showed up in minutes to arrest me for violating probation."

"That doesn't sound like it was planned at all," Chi deadpanned.

"I went willingly," Kim said. "I was pretty devastated about what I'd done to Shego and honestly didn't care about what happened to me."

"That's never good, Kim," Chi said, "I know from experience."

"I didn't need experience to know it," Kim said, "But knowing doesn't give you the magic power to change how you feel."

Chi nodded.

"I was given one minute to explain what happened to Shego," Kim said. "It was the first time I'd seen her since the whole thing began. I had so much I wanted to say to her, so much I wanted to tell her, all I managed to say was, 'I'm sorry,' Then... then she told me, 'It's ok, Princess,' and she--she kissed me."

Kim looked at Chi. There was no obvious emotion of any kind on his face. He didn't say anything. There was a silence that Kim considered quite awkward. Then he said, "Oh, wait, was I supposed to say something?"

"I was kind of expecting a response," Kim said.

"You said there would be no kissing parts?" Chi offered.

"I forgot about one --the only one-- sue me, but it was just a peck on the cheek," Kim said, "I'd still like an actual response."

"Well," Chi said, "How did you respond?"

"I didn't get a chance," Kim said. "The ones guarding us during the meeting hit her with tranq darts in response to the physical contact."

"Assholes," Chi said.

"Very much so," Kim responded. "But I'm more concerned about what it means about Shego, what it means about me, and what it means about us."

"Well," Chi said, "do you think it was a friendly kiss or a romantic kiss?"

"I don't know," Kim said.

"Which would you rather it be?" Chi asked.

"I don't know that either," Kim said.

"Um..." Chi said. "I'm not sure there's a lot there to respond to."

"Well say it was romantic, and say that in the end I did want that," Kim said, the prospect scared her. "What would you have to say to that?"

"Give me a second," Chi said. He closed his eyes and obviously thought it over a bit. "Are you more worried that you might be bisexual, or that it's Shego?"

"Bisexual?" Kim asked. Her concern regarding her sexuality was that the fact she wasn't sure she was against the kiss meant she might be a lesbian.

"Don't even try to tell me that you didn't have pants feels for Josh," Chi said.

"'Pants feels'?" Kim asked.

"Feelings in or originating from a region that we humans like to keep hidden in our pants," Chi said. "I've seen you lust. And not just for Josh, Hirotaka and the synthodrone too." Chi paused a moment. "I have no idea what your feelings towards women are, and I think you're going to need to work those out on your own, but I know for a fact that you're into men."

"Point," Kim said. "But I could really use some perspective on she Shego sitch."

"Anything specific about it?" Chi asked.

"I've spent five years... five and a half years actually, thinking about that one little kiss and I have no idea how I even feel about it," Kim said. "I'm definitely not having 'pants feels' for Shego, but I only felt ...  _that_  for boys when I was actually looking at them so I don't think that tells me anything.

"It might have been just being friendly, Shego and I were  _definitely_  friends by that point, so all of this thinking might be over nothing," Kim said. "Even if there is something, Shego was basically all I had, and I was basically all she had, so maybe it was just about there being no options."

" _That_  I can respond to, though what I say might not be useful in any way," Chi said. "On long voyages in the past it wasn't uncommon for people to have exclusive relationships that they treated like marriages for the duration but ended without acrimony when the voyage was over. So history proves that limited options do mean that people are willing pursue relationships that they wouldn't otherwise.

"In addition, sexuality isn't as set in stone as most people think," Chi said. "For some people it is, but a lot of people have more wiggle room than they themselves realize. That means that it is entirely possible that straight people -possibly Shego or yourself- could experience non-heterosexual attraction, especially if they're in a situation where there aren't heterosexual options to pursue."

"Yeah," Kim said. "That definitely wasn't useful."

"I did warn you," Chi said.

"Yes, you did," Kim said. "If there's nothing there... if I don't feel anything, she doesn't feel anything, or both, then there's no problem. We're just friends and that's the end of it. Simple, easy, no cause for concern. What I'd really like you perspective on is if there is something there."

Chi stood up and walked in a small circle. Then he sighed and said, "I'm the last person on earth you should be looking to for relationship advice."

"Really?" Kim asked.

"Really," Chi said.

"Your turn at story time," Kim said.

"Ok," Chi said. "But first drinks."

* * *

When they were back in the living room, Kim with a bottle of ginger-beer and Chi with a bottle of root-beer, Chi said, "I've known I was unique forever.

"My 'grandparents' didn't try to hide that from me, and even if they had I've have eventually noticed that other people couldn't see the colors I can see, other people didn't have the abilities I have, and so forth.

"I'm not sure you can understand the crushing weight of being the only one of your kind," Chi said. "What  _you_  do reflects on you. What you risk is risk to yourself. If you were to disappear there would still be your brothers, your parents, your cousins aunts and uncles. Even if all of the Possibles disappeared, there would still be humanity.

"But me . . ." Chi said, "well I knew that if something happened to me then there would never be another one like me. My entire subspecies would go extinct.

"I've thought about whether I should be alone forever, or if I should try to make more like me since I was five or six years old," Chi said. "When some of the scientists working on the project that created me realized that the full scope of the project would involve ferociously unethical experiments on any subjects created, they didn't just smuggle me out, they deleted all the data and all the back ups and, where possible, destroyed the hard drives too. As for the information on paper, it burns quite nicely.

"Not that I knew all of that at the age of six, but I did at least have some understanding that the only way there would ever be more like me involved me having children," Chi said. "And I thought about things in those terms. Would it be selfish to create more like me so that I wouldn't be alone? What unforeseen consequences might arise from mixing precisely designed inhuman genetics with that of ordinary people?

"About four years after high school I finally decided that I didn't want to be alone, to Hell with other concerns, and I started looking up people who I could completely trust that wanted kids but needed outside help.

"Do you remember Alex from high school?"

"Which Alex?" Kim asked.

"Alex Saffic," Chi said.

"Yeah," Kim said. "She and I didn't know each other well or anything, but I never had to worry about the treatment of LGBT kids at school because of the work she did to increase understanding and acceptance and also to make sure that the rules protected those students."

"Well, about the time I decided that I'd inflict more people like me on the world, she and Tara had just gotten married."

"Tara? Cheer squad Tara?" Kim asked.

"Yeah."

"I didn't know she was gay."

"She's not," Chi said. "She's bi, Alex is a lesbian.  _Anyway_ , they wanted kids and preferred that the sperm donor be someone that they knew. I explained the risks and such, they were willing to take them, and that was where it started.

"From there I found more people I could trust who wanted help having children. I gave sperm donations, egg donations, whatever the person in question needed."

"You have eggs?" Kim asked.

"And pistils and stamens, oh my!" Chi said, somewhat playfully.

"I didn't know you had  _plant_  parts," Kim said.

"They threw in the the kitchen sink," Chi said. "The point here has nothing to do with non-humanish bits, though. I donated stuff, and as a result there are now seventeen little Chi's out there."

"Seventeen?" Kim asked.

"Yeah, for some reason my genetics seems to be highly conducive to twins," Chi said.

Kim laughed. Whenever they'd needed an excuse for anything strange back in high school, Chi had always said that they were representatives of a scientific project to determine why there were so many twins in Middleton.

"Anyway, Tara's kids were the first," Chi said. "When they were born do you know what I realized?"

"Not a clue," Kim said.

"I realized that I'd spent so much time thinking about being alone or not in terms of my species... time during which any pants feels had made me think not about possible relationships but instead about whether or not I should perpetuate said species, that I had never once pursued a romantic relationship with anyone.

"And that," Chi said, "had left me woefully unprepared for dating."

"But that was five or six years ago," Kim said.

"Yes, and I'm still terrible at small talk and flirting; though," Chi said, his tone becoming a bit more upbeat, "the one time that I was briefly in a relationship I was informed that I was good kisser. I'm guessing that counts for something.

"And thus endth the part where we talk about me and relationships," Chi said. "Back to you. The only thing that I can really say about you and Shego is that to sort things out you need to both be in the same place, at the same time and in a setting where you feel like you have options other than each other. Then you need to talk."

"Easier said than done," Kim said. "I still haven't even figured out where they're holding her, and what I've learned of the conditions make it seem like a rescue is impossible."

"Anything's possible, Possible," Chi said.

"Including failure," Kim said.

"The wisdom of Ron," Chi responded. "What are the conditions?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Americans like me who don't know these things, what we call "Canadian bacon" is internationally known as "back bacon" and what we call "Bacon" is internationally known as streaky bacon (or side bacon.) Since Kim is a (former) globe trotter I figured she shouldn't use a term as provincial as "Canadian bacon" so I looked it up.
> 
> It might be worthwhile to talk a bit about where the character of Chi came from at this point. Chi Mira is a character created in large part in response to Kim Possible naming conventions (Adrena Lynn the apparent adrenaline junkie, Camille Leon the chameleon) and then expanded on with the idea, as stated above, of throwing in the kitchen sink (hence the platypus venom.) The idea of him having multiple brains really was in response to the idea stated in the text: extra senses really do require extra processing power to be useful which means that there's a need for more brain. So you can't just say, "I'll give my creation the eyes of [thing with incredible eyes], the ears of [thing with incredible ears]" and so forth unless you also squeeze some extra brain in there to process the added information.
> 
> For anyone interested in how Chi fits into the Kim Possible universe, he came to Middleton as a teenager because he figured that the one place on earth where no one would notice someone with a very non-standard biology would be Middleton. Thus he was at high school with Kim, Ron, and the rest.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kim describes the conditions Shego is being held in, and starts to talk about what she's been doing since she got out prison.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, remember "Ch" as in "Christmas" and "i" as in "Hi" when pronouncing "Chi".

_"I still haven't even figured out where they're holding her, and what I've learned of the conditions make it seem like a rescue is impossible."_

_"Anything's possible, Possible," Chi said._

_"Including failure," Kim said._

_"The wisdom of Ron," Chi responded. "What are the conditions?"_

“Well, the first thing you have to realize is that it's a _secret_ prison,” Kim said.

That could explain how they were able to hold Shego. The only time that Shego stayed in prison for any length of time, before she disappeared, was for four or five months after the “tower incident”, and then other people had been more than capable of breaking her out. But a secret prison ... of course this assumed that that Chi was interpreting the words correctly.

“'Secret' meaning no oversight?” Chi asked.

Kim nodded, “No one ever checking that the conditions meet basic standards.”

“No human rights,” Chi said.

“It's a lot easier to hold someone like Shego when there are no morals or laws holding back your prison design,” Kim said.

Definitely made sense how they could hold her. When one was unfettered by morality, a belief in human dignity, or a basic respect for human life, it would be possible to create a truly escape proof prison given proper funding.

This was all very dark thinking, and rightly so given that they now knew such a place existed, but continuing in this vein wouldn't be particularly helpful, in Chi's opinion, so he tried to get them back to useful conversation by shifting the topic back to the conditions, and did it by noting one of the most minor consequences imaginable in hopes that he wouldn't contribute to unnecessary unpleasantness, “No mandate for an hour of outdoor exercise would certainly do a lot to put the kibosh on various types of escape attempts.”

“The prison is deep underground,” Kim said, “and the inmates never see the sun.”

“Fun, fun,” Chi said.

“Any breach floods all nearby areas with substances that I maintain are illegal under the _Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction_ of 1972”

Chi just nodded. What was there to say to that?

“Tunneling attempts are ill advised at best anyway but given that there are explosive charges designed to cause a 'rocks fall everyone dies' outcome should tunneling be detected makes them moreso,” Kim said, “and any attempt to melt the rock is just plain stupid.”

Chi nodded, “Even the more easily meltable rocks tend to need to heated to over a thousand degrees Fahrenheit.”

“And if convection heat didn't kill you,” Kim said, “the whole place is designed so that unless you're trying to burn through the floor --which wouldn't help because you need to go up to get out-- any melted rock is going to flow such that it pushes you toward the center of the prison where the other security measures stand the greatest chance of killing you.”

“When you bust her out,” Chi said, “I want in.”

Kim said, “What makes you think I'm going to--”

“I'd want to free the inmates in a place like that on general principles anyway,” Chi said, “but I owe Shego too, so as soon as you find the place include me in your plans on setting her free.”

“I'm trying to operate solo,” Kim said. “Siding with me destroys people.”

“I'm already a criminal,” Chi said. Generally a criminal for hire, but for this job he'd sink in his own money if that was what it took.

“They'll go after people you care about. That's how they separated Wade and I.”

That possibility was disturbing, for sure, but there was a larger problem that needed correcting.

“Wade and _me_ ,” Chi said.

“Grammar freak.”

“What happened with Wade?”

“Wade's pretty much untouchable,” Kim said, “and on the rare occasions that someone does touch him they end up wishing they hadn't. But Wade has plenty of online friends, companies he does consulting work for, all sorts of quite touchable contacts.

“I told Wade to stop associating with me for their sake.”

“Random guess,” Chi said, “he didn't like that.”

“He didn't, but the fact was that he wouldn't have been able to protect all of them,” Kim said.

Wade probably didn't want to believe that, members of Team Possible had always had trouble acknowledging their limitations.

“When did you break contact with Wade?” Chi asked.

“I was still on probation,” Kim said. “Wade could contact me no matter what the authorities did and he doesn't actually have a security clearance, except when he hacks himself one, so it wasn't technically a violation, but a lot of his friends suddenly found themselves being harassed, or investigated for illegal downloading at a level completely out of proportion for the alleged crime, or such after any time he made contact.”

Chi nodded at this, but couldn't help but think they'd gotten sidetracked. “I'm following everything you've said, I think, but I feel like we kind of lost whatever coherence the conversation had.”

“Movie time?” Kim asked.

“Not a bad idea,” Chi said.

∗ ∗ ∗

“I don't think I've ever seen a movie that was that explicit about the value of consent and bodily autonomy before,” Kim said. It was ... strangely liberating. Like having movies she'd seen before not be like this had introduced a void in her life that she didn't know needed filling, and then suddenly having that void filled.

“You mean like the difference between blood being taken by force in the beginning and blood being given by choice in the end?” Chi asked.

“I mean the whole thing,” Kim said.

Chi nodded. “The entire movie should be unremarkable action fare but everything else sets the bar so low that it ends up flying over.”

Kim shrugged. She hadn't watched a movie in five and a half years, and then what she'd seen had to be old enough to be available on VHS. She had no idea where the bar was these days.

Chi asked, “So, where were we?”

“Shego was sent to hell-prison, I was sent to ordinary prison,” Kim said.

“Isn't there supposed to be a trial in there somewhere?” Chi asked.

“I'm not totally sure,” Kim said, “getting Shego the human rights following prison and me the probation could be interpreted as out of court plea bargaining.”

“Good point,” Chi said.

“There was actually a trial, though,” Kim said. “Didn't matter. The only people to show up on my behalf were the firefighters and families, plus some people from the circus. No one else came.”

“It could be that no one else knew,” Chi said. “I didn't know.”

“I know that now, but at the time, with the information I had to go on, I thought that people did know and just didn't show up for me. If you want to understand what I was going through, you need to understand that. Not ruining my reputation as a hero was part of the original deal, part that was voided when I crossed that line and saved those people.

“I was led to believe that things were no longer secret and anyone who cared about me would know about the trial,” Kim said. “To have no one from my past show up on my behalf just made me ... I don't have words for how I felt.”

The people she'd saved and the firefighters she'd saved them with, some people from the circus that wanted to hire her. That was it. None of the people from a village she saved from a flood or avalanche, no classmates, no family... no one. Not one person who wasn't directly involved in her life _at the time she was arrested_ showed up. It felt like nothing before that had mattered. Like everything she'd done had meant nothing. Like she had been nothing.

“I can imagine,” Chi said, “but that's all I can do.”

Kim was glad that Chi hadn't tried to pretend he understood. She knew he couldn't. He couldn't understand what she'd gone through anymore than she could understand what it had been like for him to have his lower right lateral brain removed.

“The trial focused solely on the death of the henchmen since the alleged theft of the PDVI and the espionage charges had been erased with the first deal,” Kim said, “So everyone got a nice message of, 'Kim Possible is a mass murderer' with an added dose of, 'who was allowed to walk free for over four years,' and an implication that I'd kept my 'freedom' by callously leveraging my fame.”

“If they were accusing you of mass murder why was the prison term only five years?” Chi asked.

Kim knew it was a perfectly legitimate question, but it caught her off guard. She asked, “That's the part that you get hung up on?”

“Well, um... yeah,” Chi said.

Kim took a breath and then let it out slowly, “For reasons that have never been clear to me,” Kim said, “I was charged using Colorado law.”

“Even then--”

“Minimum of eight years and that's for a single second degree murder, I know,” Kim said. “But I'd been on probation for more than four years and the only violation was to save people's lives. In addition, I was treated more as quasi-law-enforcement who went over the top --remember that the story was that the fictional villain was planning on killing a lot of people before making demands-- instead of a danger to non-criminals.

“And I think that a lot of it came down to the fact that what brought me into court was saving people,” Kim said. “I think they were trying to strike a balance between outrage that supposedly killing all those henches had been punished with mere probation and the fact that they didn't want to punish someone for saving families from dying in a fire.”

“Have you found out who really killed the henches?” Chi asked.

Kim's answer came out much more defensive than she intended, “I've only been out six months.”

“Sorry,” was Chi's response. After a moment he said, “You'd think that someone would have said something. You know, 'I was on the jury that sent Kim Possible to prison,' or something like that.”

“I did look into that when I finally found out that no one knew about what happened to me,” Kim said. “Everyone was sworn to secrecy for reasons of national and international security. It was backed up with threats of what could be done to security risks.

“But that's all later, at the time I thought that I was being abandoned or ignored, not that people were kept from finding out about me.

“And so my wonderful career in prison began,” Kim said.

And she stopped. She thought about her first fight in prison, how she'd tried to avoid it but eventually decided to just let it happen and saw the possibility of dying in it as a welcome release, how she'd learned that in training herself to react without conscious thought in a fight she'd made it so letting herself take a hit required a conscious effort, and when she didn't put that in --because she hadn't realized she'd needed to-- she could actually win without even trying.

She thought about how her initial strategy of keeping her head down had utterly failed to avoid conflict. She thought about her slow realization that the guards were paying extra attention to her but would only intervene if they thought she might actually die; beatings were fine.

She thought about the feeling of a shard of glass being shoved into her abdomen.

She thought about prison becoming her world and her life.

But she couldn't put anything that she thought into words.

She looked down at herself, her hands and arms, and for the first time took notice of the fact that she'd put on a long sleeved t-shirt today, just as a matter of habit, when before prison she had so often gone sleeveless.

She looked back up at Chi and said, “Let me show you something.” She stood up and added, “Back in a sec.”

∗ ∗ ∗

Kim returned wearing a tank top, but Chi barely noticed the shirt. It was her right arm his attention was drawn to. From the wrist to the shoulder it was covered in black. The tattoo was an abstract design in which straight lines of black, about as thick as a thumb, traced paths the length of Kim's arm, every so often making a sharp, forty five degree turn, going “over” or “under” each other wherever two lines intersected. There was definitely far more inked skin than non-inked skin evident on that arm.

“So,” Kim said, “I didn't want a traditional prison tattoo with any of the symbolism used in them, but the message isn't just in the symbols. Since they're done without anesthetic ...”

“Anyone looking at you knew you could take a lot of pain,” Chi finished.

“As for why it's black,” Kim said as she sat back down, “that's just the easiest color for the artist to get her hands on.”

“Any great insights about prison life you want to share?” Chi asked, but really the question had the opposite purpose of what the words said. It was to give her the opportunity to say, “No.” She took the opportunity.

“So that leaves us at six months ago,” Chi said.

“Yeah,” Kim said. “I still thought that my incarceration was public knowledge and, while I hadn't actually expected anyone to show up for my release, it still stung when no one did.

“I made my way back home. I don't know what I was expecting to do, as far as I knew it still would have ruined my parents if they were associating with me.”

“That wouldn't have stopped them,” Chi said. The Possibles had some serious problems, notably Kim's father's habit of threatening to murder, via black hole, any boy in a relationship with Kim if he so much as made her unhappy, but even most of their problems were evidence that they'd do anything for family. Them staying away during the post-21 probation was probably to stop Kim from being punished rather than a sense of self-preservation.

“Probably not,” Kim said, “but they weren't there. The house, which we'd all put so much work into rebuilding, had been abandoned. I don't know where they went because there's no forwarding address.”

Chi didn't say anything.

“And that was when I decided, 'To hell with parole',” Kim said.

“You mean that I'm not just harboring an alleged mass murderer but an actual violator of parole?” Chi said in fake shock. “I had no idea; this is so, so bad.”

Kim gave a faint smirk.

Sometimes even really bad, painfully corny attempts at humor got the job done.

“For about a week I wallowed,” Kim said. “Whether it was self pity or abject apathy I was wallowing in changed from day to day or even hour to hour.”

Kim paused a bit, and Chi wasn't sure if he should say anything.

“As the time went on, though, I started to feel more and more anger,” Kim said. “I'd saved the world so many times I lost count, I'd done enough babysitting that I'd practically raised some people's kids for them, I'd put my life on the line near constantly, I'd sacrificed any considerations about what I might want in order to help people, and for all of that I found myself reduced to nothing. After everything I'd done for the world, the world left me homeless, friendless, penniless, and depending on soup kitchens to keep from starving outright.

“Anger can be very constructive,” Kim said. “The angrier I got at the injustice of the situation, the more alive I became. It gave me a purpose, a direction, I'd make them _pay_ for what they did to me.”

Chi wasn't going to judge Kim. Twisted and warped as it was, there was sheer joy in her voice at the thought of retribution and it disturbed him, but he'd been there. Vengeance hardly cared whether one was avenging a wrong or piling on more wrong through revenge.

You brought your pain inside of you and held onto it rather than let it go. You gave it a privileged position within your very being, letting it override lesser concerns like, say, your own morals. And then you took this thing that had been given to you and sought to reward the giver with their own equal or greater share. It was just a charitable impulse toward reciprocity, really. Reward pain with pain in kind.

“The most obvious target was GJ,” Kim said, “They'd sent me on the mission that ruined everything, they'd enforced the probation, and I knew enough about their operations to find a place to strike.”

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
∗ Six Months Ago ∗  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

“What are the threats today?” a mid level Global Justice employee asked a lower level one in a fairly unremarkable monitoring station.

The low level employee looked at a clipboard and reported, “Sonique has been collecting amplifiers, Gil Moss is in the area apparently looking into the possibility of obtaining samples of a mutagenic agent that reportedly affected five animals in the local sewers between ten and twenty years ago--”

“Why don't we know precisely how long ago it occurred?” the mid level employee asked.

“We're not even sure the reports are more than urban legend sir. Details are extremely difficult to ascertain.”

“What were the five animals?”

“One member of the order Rodentia, supposedly near the end of its natural life, and four members of the order Testudines, supposedly newborn,” the low level employee said, “Exposure is believed to have resulted in massive increases in the size and intelligence of all five while simultaneously extending their lifespans, notably of the Rodentia.”

“Moss will be interested in the Testudines, he only cares about aquatic mutants and he had an unpleasant experience with a mutant beaver in his teens.”

“All five are also reportedly students of a school of Japanese martial arts.”

“It's irrelevant,” the mid level employee said. “Let Moss look all he wants, he's not going to find the mutagenic agent, assuming it does exist, over a decade after it was released into the sewers. Other threats?”

The low level employee looked at his clipboard and obviously didn't think highly of any of the things that remained, “Doctors Dile and Gator are both reportedly gathering henchmen, an X-239 has been stolen but there's only an estimated one point five percent chance it will come into our area, and--”

“Someone you stabbed in the back is standing right behind you,” Kim said.

The mid level employee spun to face her, the low level employee didn't move at all.

“Possible,” the mid level employee said, apparently to the universe in general because it didn't seem, to Kim, to be directed at anyone. It certainly wasn't a greeting. Then the mid level employee told the low level one, “Get--”

Kim kicked the mid level employee in the gut, and then without putting her kicking foot down, and only a tiny hop to realign her foot on the ground, kicked the low level employee in the side. She didn't mind the cry of pain, she did mind that low level stayed standing. It only took a tap to the back of the knee to drop low level to his knees. Then she just shoved forward. When he landed with a thud she told him, “Stay down,” and returned her attention to the mid level employee.

“Your bad intel ruined my life,” Kim said to mid level, she wouldn't grace the individual with a name, “and I can't help but wonder how someone thinks that a pan-dimensional vortex inducer is present, powered up, and hooked into a doomsday device 'primed to go off at any moment' when there isn't a PDVI within a hundred mile radius of the site in question.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” mid level said.

“I traced the intelligence passed on to me, it came from your desk,” Kim said.

Mid level tried to run.

One grab and three punches later and mid level was sitting on the ground, back propped up on the wall, trying to keep pressure on a bloody nose.

“Are we through with the running?” Kim asked.

“You're talking about a single assignment from nine and a half years ago,” mid level said, “I don't remember.”

“If you don't remember,” Kim asked, “then why do you remember it was nine and a half years ago?”

“Because--”

“And if you don't remember doing anything wrong, then why did you run?” Kim asked.

“You went rogue!” Mid level said.

“So you don't remember the assignment, but you do remember the alleged outcome of the assignment?”

“You're rogue now! You broke into a highly secured facility--”

Kim snorted.

“This _is_ a--”

“Don't make me laugh,” Kim said.

“You accused me of ruining your life after you'd already kicked me,” mid level said. “Of course I ran.”

“You say that,” Kim said, “but I when I ran after finding a bunch of dead bodies and then having someone _blow up the building I was in_ , that was apparently proof I was guilty. Five years of prison and four and a half years of probation worth of proof.”

Mid level let, “You weren't supposed to go to prison,” slip out in a moment of apparent surprise.

“It sounds as if you do remember something,” Kim said.

“It was nothing personal,” mid level said quickly.

“You ruined my life,” Kim said, bringing her face closer to mid level's and looking straight in mid level's eyes, “and I take that personally.”

“GJ is part intelligence agency,” mid level said. “Lies are part of what we do.”

“That sounds so very just,” Kim said as she backed away to a more reasonable distance.

“No one was supposed to die,” mid level said. “ _You_ went overboard and killed--”

“I haven't killed anyone,” Kim said calmly, “but if you keep on telling me lies I'm willing to start.”

“I was following--” this time mid level stopped without being interrupted.

“Realize that that wasn't the best defense?” Kim asked.

“Operation Faux Hole--”

“It looked better on paper than it sounded when you said it aloud, didn't it?”

“It was just supposed to discredit you. When you couldn't recover the PDVI it would-- but then you killed those--” mid level seemed to rethink things, as Kim pondered what might hurt mid level as much as the accusations hurt her. “When the henchmen ... turned up dead everything changed. I was transferred to an entirely different unit--”

“At a higher pay grade,” Kim said. “The whole thing really helped your career along, didn't it?”

“It was a disaster!” mid level shouted. “With things so unstable after the invasion we couldn't afford a rogue operator like you--”

“I'm a 'rogue operator'?” Kim asked.

“I think you've shown that beyond all doubt,” mid lever said.

Kim thought about that for a moment, then she asked, “And whose fault is that?”

“The operation was to remove a rogue element and stop a new villain at the same time without anyone getting killed,” mid level said. “No bloodshed. Then _you_ head out with Shego and suddenly we're all neck deep in blood.”

Kim let off some steam by punching mid level and crying out in rage. She thanked whatever gods may be for the soundproofing in the GJ installation.

“Who led the operation?” Kim asked.

“Information is compartmentalized so--”

Kim growled.

“They didn't tell me.”

“Who classified me as needing to be removed?” Kim asked.

“They didn't tell me.”

“Did you know that there's a smell so repugnant that it'll drive a person to unconsciousness in seconds?” Kim asked.

“What?” Mid level was appropriately confused. Kim opened a can labeled as lip gloss under mid level's nose.

Then she stood up.

She walked to where low level was still laying on floor. “Good job staying down,” she said. “You might want to activate some alarm now so that they don't think you're working with me.”

Low level looked up, and looked uncertain. Kim nodded. Low level ran off. Kim raided mid level's pockets. She was rewarded with an RFID keycard.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
∗ Present ∗  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

“I stole some hard drives from their servers,” Kim said, “took me a while to find someone to crack them for me --I've always been more of a hardware person than a software one-- but once I did I dumped the information online and didn't hide how I'd gotten it. Or, rather, who I'd used to get it.”

“So I'm guessing that mid level's career in intelligence took a hit,” Chi said. Sometimes what hurt the most wasn't physical pain. Someone like that lived and breathed information analysis, putting together the puzzle with pieces ordinary individuals didn't even know existed. Revenge was taking them out of the game; smashing their security clearance.

“Not as much as it deserved to,” Kim said, “but careers are funny things.”

“And letting the other one set off an alarm?” Chi asked.

Kim shrugged then said, “Shego's been known to take down GJ goons at a rate of one every seven point five seconds when they're fully alerted and swarming, I wanted a shot at the title.”

Made sense, violence was a fairly direct way of letting off steam --even if it wasn't a particularly good way to to do it-- and at that point she had almost a a decade of worth of pent up steam. It was a wonder she hadn't exploded.

“So, you had the name for an operation that was clearly made by someone who didn't know that the 'x' in 'faux' is silent,” Chi said. “Where did you go from there?”

“Well, Global Justice keeps multiple copies of all of their little secrets, in case their network is compromised,” Kim said.

“Offline hard drives that only interact with the outside world when someone manually brings in new data to dump?” Chi asked.

“And paper copies in another location in case someone manages to take out all computers via new technology.”

“That is monstrously stupid,” Chi said.

“The Lorwardian ability to hit the off switch on the entire world led to a lot of people being wary of putting too much trust in technology,” Kim said.

“If you have it in an EMP shielded room, grounded, and powered down, your data's pretty secure.”

“Regardless,” Kim said, “Paper copies.”

“They had to be in code,” Chi said.

“Sure,” Kim said, “But they didn't reprint all of the earlier stacks every time they improved their ciphers, meaning that the information I wanted was in old code.”

“I say again: monstrously stupid,” Chi said.

“Thermite charges to incinerate everything if the facility is breached,” Kim said.

There was absolutely no reason to use thermite to burn paper. It was like using lava to melt wax.

“Complete overkill aside,” Chi said, “my point stands, especially since their response to the obvious security risk such a facility poses is to blow up their backup of last resort thus defeating the entire purpose of having a back up of last resort.”

“It was pretty hard actually finding the place,” Kim offered.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
∗ Five Months Ago ∗  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

Kim was packing lighter than ever and had given up on electronic communications entirely. Anything that transmitted anything was off limits now. Things that received though, those could be useful.

She'd combined parts scavenged from an open air dump with parts ripped from GJ coms units, and a police scanner that she'd stolen from a cop who'd been shaking down a random teenager. Obviously all the transmitters had been ripped out.

What the resulting device was telling her right now was that the cops weren't on the lookout for her and GJ didn't seem to know she was coming either.

On the surface the facility looked like an abandoned building which was appropriate because she looked exactly like what she was: a homeless person who could use a roof.

She wandered in an looked for a good place to set up a bed. The question was whether GJ would ignore her or try to shoo her away. The second would be better, but if it turned out to be the first she'd welcome the chance to rest a bit. There had been freezing rain and the faded hoodie she used for warmth and to hide her hair had first been drenched and then it had frozen.

The ice had cracked and broken so she could move just fine, but a chance to be out the weather and maybe sleep by a fire would not go unappreciated.

She found a decent spot on the second floor. The floor was wood. How had no one salvaged this yet?

She shed the hoodie and her shoes and socks. Too much ice, too much cold, and then went to work. These days her toolkit included a crowbar and a sledge hammer that was short and extremely heavy. They weren't exactly ideal for making a hole in the floor, but the did get the job done eventually.

It also got her body to heat up a bit. Enough that interlacing her fingers and toes returned some feeling to the latter without making her worry about the former.

Once that was done she used the crowbar as a chisel to pry up floorboards. When she had enough wood, she got to work on kindling. The sledge hammer plus the the crowbar sufficed for breaking the boards into smaller pieces, but for the actual shavings that would get the fire started she used a bayonet knife she'd taken off a group of unmarked soldiers --uniforms without insignia or identifying marks, pockets bereft of ID, and not a single dog tag-- armed with M16s who'd tried to ambush her a week and a half ago.

The M7 bayonet knife had become invaluable in the short time she'd had it, and she used it in applications as diverse as preparing food and applying the torque to pick locks. In fact, she'd found so many uses for it that making shavings from floorboards for kindling was downright mundane and unremarkable.

The knife hadn't been the only useful thing to come out of that encounter, she reflected as she made the shavings. It had taught her not to show her face near networked cameras. Who would have thought a traffic camera would cause her so much trouble? True, they'd already suspected she was in the area, and she'd known that, but still ... it was a traffic camera.

Once she had what she needed for the fire, she needed something that wouldn't burn to set up the fire on. That was as simple as tearing out some drywall and laying it on the floor. Her fire circle was a bit less inspiring, but she worked with what she had and that didn't include a bunch of rocks.

She started it with a lighter she'd lifted from a gift shop in Go City. “A piece of Go City to bring home with you,” made in China.

Once upon a time she never would have considered stealing.

As soon as she was sure the the fire had taken and would keep going, she positioned her clothing around it, close enough for heat, far enough not to catch (hopefully), and lay herself down beside it.

∗ ∗ ∗

“Miss, I have to ask you to leave,” a man said.

Kim just replied, “I'm trying to sleep here.”

“That's the problem. You're trespassing,” the voice said. She looked up at the person addressing her. GJ. They did come out after all. “Not to mention the vandalism.”

“I beg to differ,” Kim said as she got up. “I have permission from the owner to be here. _You're_ trespassing.”

The man laughed and then gave voice to his incredulity “Really?”

“Terra Dominus,” (who named their fictitious land lord “Land Lord” in Latin, anyway?) “has been trying to change her image away from that of a soulless slum lord and as a part of that project she's opened up her currently empty buildings to all comers as part of a project to end homelessness. I was the first applicant,” Kim said.

“Who?” the man asked.

GJ was getting even more sloppy than she remembered if the facility guard didn't know the cover story.

“Terra Dominus,” Kim said as if everyone on earth knew the name, “owner of the Domus Real Estate Company.” The man showed no recognition. Kim acted like she was speaking down to someone extremely stupid, “The Domus Commercial Real Estate Group, which owns this building, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Domus Real Estate Company.”

“You expect me to believe that some rich CEO gave you permission to tear up one of her buildings?” the man asked.

“Of course not,” Kim said. “That's why I have paperwork, in duplicate no less.” Kim rummaged through her bag and pulled out some papers. “This is the one with a coffee stain on it, so even you're probably not incompetent enough to mess it up more than it already is,” Kim said when she handed the papers to the the man.

“Now I never personally met with Ms. Dominus, but you'll see her signature is on the paperwork,” Kim said. It had been easy enough to forge the signature and she had no worries about it being noticed as a forgery. GJ had gotten sloppy and used the exact same signature for all of their documentation which meant that if push came to shove the GJ documents would be suspected to be forged, since no human being can produce exactly the same pen strokes twice, much less every single time, and in the ensuing legal mess Kim's forgery would completely ignored and forgotten.

The man from GJ did look at the documents, and seemed a bit agitated the more he looked, probably because everything was in order.

“You'll note that paragraph six on the third page states that I can remodel however I see fit,” Kim said. “It's the one that starts, 'Whereas there is an intention to renovate the building in six months...' Silly rich people with their bloated language.”

Kim paused just long enough to let the man think he'd have a chance to speak, and then said, “Why are you even here? I asked about building security and was told I'd have to provide my own. There's absolutely nothing connecting this site to GJ.” That was the problem with owning something through a front. Yes it means that outsiders can't connect the thing to you, but it also means that you can't prove that you own it given the work you've done to distance yourself from it.

As the man was about to answer Kim cut him off again. “Did you get tired harassing hapless people at internet cafes?”

“How--” and then he cut himself off. Apparently GJ wasn't openly acknowledging that little escapade. It was two weeks ago and what she assumed led to traffic camera scrutiny that in turn led to to the anonymous gun toting unit going after her. She'd just been doing some basic research trying to figure out where this facility was. She hadn't even broken any laws.

She felt bad about the whole thing because, as far as she knew, the cafe had been shuttered as a result of the raid. GJ stormed the place trying to catch her, but they'd failed miserably. There was a reason that she'd kept her signature hairstyle. Being spotted occasionally without hiding it meant that the authorities were always looking for a redhead. Which meant that a hairnet and a wig, in that particular case a bright blue wig, was all it took to make them decide not to give her a second glance.

Wigs went on sale after people no longer needed them for their costumes, but some of what hadn't sold on Halloween still hadn't sold months later and Kim was able to pick up five new hair colors at a good price.

Anyway, it was time to respond to the GJ man's aborted question: “It was an _internet_ cafe, you can't possibly think you could keep something like that secret when people were live blogging and tweeting your unconstitutional raid as it happened.”

She let a moment pass and then pretended that she'd just realized something, “Oh... that's why you're picking on me. You realized that you couldn't push around tech savy middle class kids and you assumed that a poor woman like me wouldn't have access to the internet.”

She snatched back the papers she'd given him. “Let's go to to the cops and see who they believe,” Kim said. “Me, who has all the proper paperwork, or you who has nothing but a bully mentality and baseless accusations.”

They'd believe him, obviously. GJ was law enforcement, poor people were ignored, and there was still enough misogyny in the world that “he said / she said” tended to end with “The cops believed him.” But GJ couldn't go to the police about someone trespassing on property they didn't officially own in a place they weren't officially supposed to be operating. Going to the police was tantamount to admitting they had a secret base here, and secret bases, when exposed, tended to attract attention.

To show she was ready to take the matter to the police Kim started putting on her socks, which had dried out, and her shoes, which had not.

“Lets not be hasty,” the GJ man said. He raised his hands in a gesture meant to look like “Hold on” but Kim knew what he was doing. She rolled and the STOP watch missed its mark. She impacted him in the legs and he fell, forward, over her.

Kim used her knock out gas lip-gloss to finish him.

She was disappointed. She'd enjoyed talking circles around him.

∗ ∗ ∗

GJ really needed to make it less easy to break into their bases. No wonder Shego had always been so bored.

The underground facility was huge, but lightly guarded. Kim evaded the patrols not because she didn't want to fight, but because she knew it would take ages to find what she was looking for. There was just too much ground to cover.

Eventually she was able locate the papers on Operation Faux Hole. There were too many to extract, either the information on the operation was incredibly detailed, or the way it was encoded significantly increased its length.

Fortunately, she had come prepared. More theft. The once great Kim Possible reduced to using a stolen digital camera to steal classified information.

∗ ∗ ∗

“Kim Possible?” a voice asked.

Kim cursed herself for being caught off guard, the ease of her entrance led to her being sloppy on her escape. She turned to face the speaker.

He or she was wearing a standard GJ uniform and looked to be around twenty years old. Probably someone who got a low level job in a facility never expected to see action after being recruited right out of high school and put through training. Kim was all kinds of uncertain on whether she was facing a he or a she.

“I knew it was you,” the GJ agent said. “That's why I didn't set off the alarms when I saw you on the security feed.”

Ok, apparently GJ hadn't let everyone know that she was now considered the enemy.

“You're like my hero,” the agent said.

“Uh, don't take this the wrong way,” Kim said, “but are you male or female?”

“Truthfully neither, but my birth certificate and my file say, 'Male',” the agent said.

“So, what do I call you?” Kim asked.

“Riley,” the agent said, “and if you need to use pronouns go gender neutral.”

“Like 'it'?” It was hard for Kim to believe someone wanted to be an it. "It" had too many objectifying implications.

Riley smiled, appeared to narrowly avoid laughing, and said, “No, like singular they / them / their / theirs /themselves or a new gender neutral pronoun like ze / zir / zir / zirs / zirself or ne / nem / nir / nirs / nemself.”

“Ok,” Kim said trying to absorb the information. Maybe she should have spent more time with the queer-straight alliance in high school. She'd thought she had a handle on everything already and didn't need to. “Listen, Riley, I'm not officially supposed to be here.”

“Of course, this place doesn't officially exist.”

“What I mean is that I wasn't supposed to be noticed on the cameras, make contact with the personnel, or have my presence logged in any way,” Kim said, and it was all true. She very much did not want Global Justice to know she'd been there just yet.

“I can erase you from the tapes,” Riley said, “and I can keep a secret.”

“I appreciate it,” Kim said. Riley was being helpful and she didn't want to get ... nem in trouble. On the other hand, her clothes were still wet and her feet felt like they were going to kill her via some horrible soaking related disease. “Since I wasn't supposed to interact with you, I definitely wasn't supposed to tell you this, but this facility's been compromised and they'll be using the thermite soon.”

Riley's eyes went wide, but ne said nothing.

“Given that, do you think anyone would notice or mind if I changed into some dryer clothes and took them with me?”

For a moment Riley said nothing, then motioned for Kim to follow and said, “I think I can help.”

∗ ∗ ∗

Kim was outfitted in GJ standard fare including luxuriously dry socks and wonderfully waterproof boots.

“Thank you so much,” she said to Riley.

“Like you say,” Riley said, “no big.”

Kim nodded.

“You know, when I said you were my hero,” Riley said, “you made a much bigger difference in my life than just being a role model.”

Kim used to get the hero stuff a lot. Prison had been rather lacking in it though. Riley was the first person to unsarcastically call her a hero since the fire that'd gotten her thrown in prison.

“I'd known I wasn't like other boys for as long as I can remember, but it didn't really click that it was because I didn't fit into whole 'boy' category until someone said, to make fun of me, that growing up to be 'just like you' --which is something I said I wanted to do all the time-- would make me a girl,” Riley said. “It was a like a light switched on. The concept of not being a boy didn't bother me a bit, it took me a while longer to realize that I wasn't a boy _or_ a girl, but it was hero worship of you as a kid that set me on the path to finally being able to be me.”

And now Kim felt really bad about using this person to get dry clothes. As she packed her wet stuff in a plastic bag Riley had provided from somewhere and packed _that_ into her backpack she had an idea of how she might be able to make things go right.

“Deleting the video of me could get you into a lot of trouble,” Kim said. It looked like Riley was going to protest but Kim held up a hand. “Let me finish.” Riley nodded. “Since this place is compromised and will be destroyed soon anyway, why not report the missing video, file this as a possible incursion, and thus avoid any questions that would come up if you tried to cover up the doctoring of the video?”

“That sounds awfully dishonest,” Riley said. Kim considered quoting mid level's thing about lying being part of intelligence work, but before she could remember the exact words, Riley added, “I like it.”

Kim smiled. “If you really want to be like me when you grow up,” she said, “always remember that rules, regulations, and laws exist to serve justice, so when the rules conflict with justice you have to break the rules.”

“I have to get back to my post,” Riley said.

“I have to slip out,” Kim said, “but before I do … I really don't want to get you in trouble, and I hope I won't, but if I do... I still check the forums on my website. Contact me there and I'll do whatever I can to help.”

“It was nice meeting you,” Riley said.

“It was an unexpected pleasure to meet you,” Kim said. They went their separate ways.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
∗ Present ∗  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

“What happened to Riley?” Chi asked.

“In the immediate aftermath things went well,” Kim said. “Unfortunately things went downhill after I destroyed the facility.”

“Come again?”

“The facility _was_ compromised--”

“By you,” Chi said.

“--and I had been planning on getting rid of it,” Kim said. She'd let non-traditional media, basically young people with camcorders or cell phones, know that something was going to be happening in an apparently abandoned part of town at a specific time. Global Justice agents fleeing the site of the artificial sink hole created when the facility was destroyed set off any number of conspiracy theories. The bad press for them was hardly her ideal revenge, but it did serve as a bit of icing.

Plus, it had been low hanging fruit.

“Since it was rigged to blow anyway,” Kim said, “it was pretty easy to do. I didn't even have to go inside to set off the self destruct.”

“I'm guessing that there was a recon element involved in the time you did go in, which you totally left out of the story you told me,” Chi said.

“You wanted me to spoil the surprise?” Kim asked in fake disbelief.

“I don't expect the whole truth,” Chi said, “but I do appreciate getting the pertinent details.”

“Before the destruction of the facility it looked like someone took out the above ground guard, used his clearance to get inside, did something, removed incriminating footage, and left,” Kim said. “That alone should have been enough to get the higher ups in a panic, but it didn't. When the facility ceased to exist, though, they did get into a panic.

“I wasn't in disguise at the time, I'd taken off the hoodie so it could thaw and then dry, thus leaving my hair in plain view, so the above ground guard reported me in such a way that when people who were aware that I'd bailed on parole and was pissed of at Global Justice read the report--”

“They thought, 'Kim Possible',” Chi said.

“Pretty much,” Kim said. “And they decided that everyone who was working at the facility on either the day I infiltrated it or the day it was destroyed was a potential accomplice and detained the lot of them, indefinitely.”

“You bust them out?”

“I need to find a directed EMP weapon, an armored bus, and really good hiking shoes before I can even _try_ ,” Kim said. And she did want to get those people out. Before Global Justice turned on them the only worker she cared about was Riley, but when they became victims of Global Jutice's injustice, that reclassified all of them in Kim's mind. The fact that it was partly her doing just made the need to help them stronger.

“Would a school bus with tank armor welded on work?” Chi asked.

“It might,” Kim said.

“Well I can get you that and the shoes, but I don't have any good leads on non area of effect EMP devices,” Chi said.

“I'd appreciate that,” Kim said.

“You're welcome, but it's not just for you,” Chi said. “They've been imprisoned for, what, five months now without doing anything wrong?”

“Yeah, about five months,” Kim said.

One of many things Kim felt bad about. She'd had a moral obligation to set them free the moment they were unjustly locked up.

“Anything come out of your theft?” Chi asked.

_Five weeks of going through pictures and tediously translating a decade-old code into plain text_ , Kim thought.

“I got a name: Jacob Phelps,” Kim said.

“Something tells me you're not talking about the environmental science guy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've mentioned a few times in various places that I looked to two stories for inspiration. "Jacob Phelps" being the leader of the operation that landed Kim in jail is a reference to one of those, LJ58's _Bad Girls_. The other, for anyone curious, was _Action and Reaction_ by ShadowDancer01.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kim's journey leads her to an installation with security she can't bypass.

They were back in Chi's living room with fresh sodas, and it was time for Kim to continue her story.

“It was fairly easy tracking Phelps down,” Kim said. “The file gave the location of the facility he'd been working in at the time, and from there the legwork was easy. He'd moved around a bit, but we live in an age of facebook and forwarding addresses.

“I found him less than a week after I started looking and by three and a half months ago I was already planning my attack on the facility where he worked.”

“Didn't want to pay him a home visit?” Chi asked.

“Look, I've stolen a hoverjet, run up a black flag, and declared war on the world. I wanted to have our meeting where I could do the most damage and that is not someone's bedroom,” Kim said.

“When did you steal a hoverjet?” Chi asked.

“Not too long ago, we haven't gotten there yet.”

“And the black flag is metaphorical, right?”

“Pretty much.”

“So, where were we?” Chi asked.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
~~Three And A Half Months Ago~~  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

Kim held a cobbled together device with an ever growing number of sensors that she'd finally given the name “The Receiver”. It was showing her massive amounts of activity in every conceivable form.

The first thing she picked up was something she'd never really intended the Receiver to detect, but some fiddling revealed it to be regular sonic pulses. A key feature in any active sonar system, but not something one expected to encounter at that range on land. Instead of the ultrasonics used by some motion detectors, Kim first picked up infrasonic pulses.

Unexpected meant that would-be infiltrators wouldn't be checking for or countering it. Kim had no way of gauging how well it worked, but she knew that certain bats were able to do impressive things with the same means.

She did eventually pick up ultrasonics, but the next thing she picked up was infrared. She'd intended the receiver to pick up infrared transmissions, but what she was getting was a flood of incoherent infrared. Spotlights. Invisible to the human eye but doubtless keyed to the same wavelength as cameras monitoring the area. Trying to approach at night would be practically the same as coming in bright daylight as far as anyone monitoring the feeds from the security cameras was concerned.

The mircowave bursts didn't come as much of a surprise. If someone was going to use low frequency echolocation, why not also install compact surveillance radar?

When she finally got a look at the building it was a fortress. Every door screamed to stay out, the windows didn't look all that impressive in themselves but given the look of the frames convinced Kim that she'd need an explosive to get through them. Plus they were tinted so Kim had no idea what might be hiding behind them.

Visible cameras covered every conceivable angle, even more could be hidden behind the windows or in architectural features meant to look innocuous that Kim could tell were hiding something.

Guards patrolled inside and outside of the fence on a mix of regular and intermittent patrols that seemed to make any attempt at learning where the guards would and would not be impossible.

The fence itself gave Kim pause. At first glance it seemed unassuming, as far as barbed wire fences went. Six and a half feet of chain-link, a barb wire triangle at the top: three strands angled out to prevent intrusion, three strands angled in to prevent escape. Additional glances made it look far more menacing. Kim suspected that the reason it was topped with barbed wire rather than razor wire was to cause would-be intruders to underestimate it.

After what felt like hours of squinting through cheap fordable binoculars she'd stolen from a nearby mall, Kim tentatively concluded that the fence had at least three hidden security systems. First, each poll seemed to have modified pressure sensors that would detect any weight, like say that of a human being, on the fence. Second, certain levels of the chain-link had wires, which would doubtless sound an alarm if cut, running along them. They were, naturally, spaced too close together for a human being to fit between. Third, wires of another sort made Kim suspect the fence could be electrified at the touch of a button. The fence was grounded default, but if the chain-link base was LLDPE-coated rather than galvanized . . .

While the facility was secluded in a wooded area, the forest was cut back ten feet from the fence. Instead of cover there was perfectly manicured lawn on all sides of the fence, once one got inside the fence there was far too much open air to even hope of sneaking in.

As for the actual communications that Kim had designed the Receiver to intercept, Kim hadn't cracked the encoding yet, but she was picking up so many transmissions that she knew all of the guards must be checking in at regular, and short, intervals to make sure a neutralized guard wouldn't go undetected for long.

This was not going to be as easy to get into as the records facility. This didn't even feel like a Global Justice base. GJ was never this good.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
~~Present~~  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

“Remind me again why you couldn't just do an in-home visit,” Chi said.

Kim took a deep breath.

“Look, you have to at least try to understand my state of mind. It was bad enough when I became untouchable for 'stealing' a PDVI that never existed, then I went to trial where no one from my past showed up on my behalf. No one. Not a single person I'd helped, not a single person I'd been friends with, not a single person I'd saved, and no family. Not even cousin Larry.

“It felt like everything I'd done had been for nothing. Like I'd traded my life away for a few free rides. Like there had been no value in doing good.  
“Then five years in prison without so much as a postcard from anyone. Finally I get out and there's no one. No one at all. No friends. No family. Nothing.

“I didn't just want to get to the bottom of who framed me and why, I wanted to make people hurt.”

Chi just nodded.

“Anyway,” Kim said, “The facility that was fronting for Global Justice was supposedly a toy company.”

“Playtronics?” Chi asked.

“You overestimate their taste,” Kim said.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
~~Three And A Half Months Ago~~  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

Kim thought about all of the security from deep enough in the woods that she'd be utterly indistinguishable from a deer no matter how closely someone on the facility grounds happened to be looking.

Finally she said, “Toy company my ass,” and walked back toward the absolute edge of where she could safely go.

∗ ∗ ∗

Making a catapult from a sapling was easy. Making a catapult that no one would recognize as such after it had gone off? Harder. Making such an undetectable catapult such that it would go off on a delay? Nothing is impossible.

If Kim wanted to get in she had to know what happened when the alarms went off. Thus unrecognizable catapult on a delay.

∗ ∗ ∗

Kim watched from atop a distant tree as multiple teams from inside the facility searched the area where her catapult had set off the motion sensors. The guards were good. They worked in teams of three, checked in regularly, searched as if their lives depended on finding what they were looking for, and took a very long time to call things off as a false alarm.

The use of teams from inside the facility meant that the alarm didn't open any holes anywhere else in the security coverage. When they'd all finally gone back inside, Kim went to set off an alarm in a new area.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
~~Present~~  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

“The second time they did an even more detailed search.” Kim said. “It convinced me that I should fall back. I did manage to key into their frequency and encryption though, so the third time I was listening to their radios rather than watching them. That let me do my observation from public land out of any line of sight.

“Their energy didn't subside until the fifth search, and even then they kept on going through the motions with all due thoroughness.

“It wasn't until the ninth alarm of the third day that they stopped treating the situation as an attack and called in off-site technicians to see if they could figure out what was going wrong with their security system.”

“That's a while,” Chi said. “If I thought my security might be messed up I'd check out the equipment right away.”

“Oh, they did,” Kim said. “That just made them even more wary when they couldn't find anything wrong with it. They called in the outsiders because because the in-house technicians still couldn't find anything wrong after three days of apparent false alarms.”

“The outsiders were still Global Justice, though, right?” Chi asked.

“Of course,” Kim said, “but 'security system technician' isn't exactly the highest clearance job.”

“Some things never change,” Chi said. “A company has a billion dollar secret and they'll guard it with rent-a-cops they underpay and actively distrust. A government has a secret base, and the soldiers on the outside tasked with keeping it secret don't even know why it's secret or what's done there.”

“Pretty much,” Kim said.

“You bribe the technicians?” Chi asked.

“You think so little of me?” Kim asked in mock annoyance.

“You're a parole violator, a shoplifter, and a trespasser,” Chi said.

“Also a pickpocket,” Kim said, “which is what I wanted the-off site technicians for.”

“How do you pick the pocket of someone in a base you can't reach?” Chi asked.

“By waiting until they're outside of the base,” Kim said. “They made a pit stop on the way home.

“Bueno Nacho?”

“Smarty Mart.”

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
~~Three and a Half Months Ago~~  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

It took hours for the technicians to check all of the sensors that had 'misfired'. Since none of them were malfunctioning that doubtless set off another flurry of briefly stepping up security for fear that the base was being tested by an unknown enemy in preparation for an attack.

Even though Kim was th*e unknown enemy, she didn't really care about that at this point. She was more concerned with the way the technicians would leave.

Even as she had listened to the guards' chatter about the technicians she had been scouting mundane signs she'd left at intersections on the road leading away from the facility. Chalk here, a fallen stick there, whatever would tell her which way the van had come and thus suggest which way the van would leave.

When she started to lose the guards' chatter she figured she'd scouted to her limits, and retrieved something she had just for the occasion from where she'd stowed it in the woods off the road beyond the facility's security perimeter.

When the technicians packed up in their van and left, she followed them on her scooter-

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
~~Present~~  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

“Wait,” Chi said, “since when do you have a moped?”

“I don't have a moped,” Kim said. “Any vehicle beyond a short range jet-pack is hard to hide, easy to track, and just plain heavy. It's just that it's a lot easier to follow a motor vehicle when you're moving using a vehicle with a motor. Tailing a van while on foot doesn't work very well.”

“So when did you get the moped?” Chi asked.

“I made it out of parts I found in a nearby junkyard on the second day of setting off the alarms,” Kim said.

“Just your basic average girl,” Chi said flatly.

“So I happen to like mechanical engineering,” Kim responded.

“McGyver and the A-Team combined couldn't do what you do,” Chi said.

“They're not girls.”

“Ok, moving on,” Chi said. “You tailed them to Smarty Mart and then what?”

“Well, for one thing, once I got inside it wasn't exactly hard to figure out who the technicians were.”

“They leave their uniforms on?”

“No, but they might as well have.”

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
~~Three and a Half Months Ago~~  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

“. . . because they've got everything tuned so finely it'd pick up an errant field mouse and report it as if it were the invasion of Normandy,” one of the technicians said.

“There needs to be a lower tolerance for the ambient environment,” another of the technicians said in agreement. “It's a miracle the damned things aren't going off constantly because of air currents and Brownian motion.”

“I don't disagree,” a third said, “but you can understand their paranoia. If even one of the stories is true then--”

“They deserve to get invaded,” a fourth said. “But the stories can't be true, can they? We'd never condone that.”

The first said, “Why else would they have everything set up to go off at a--”

“Don't speculate,” the fifth said. “Let's just get the equipment we need and get away from that place.”

“They should have asked us why the alarms weren't going off the rest of the time,” the second grumbled. “That they've been going off recently is their own fault.”

“I told you to stop,” the fifth said. “being within twenty miles of that place makes my skin crawl. We wouldn't have stopped this close to that . . .” the fifth technician seemed to have difficulty finding a word that conveyed sufficient disgust. Eventually the sentence was restarted: “We wouldn't have stopped this close to that place, except that it's on the way back.”

Kim listened to it all as looked over all five technicians while pretending to be deciding which can of Vienna sausages to buy. She could always break into their van, but it would be easier if one of them-

Bingo. Technician three had a GJ Mobile Database shaped bulge in the right coat pocket.

Kim snatched it without breaking stride as she moved from Vienna sausages to racing drones. Smarty Mart did seem to have everything.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
~~Present~~  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

“Why would you need one of those if you'd already cracked their coms?” Chi asked.

“You don't break into GJ facilities much, do you?”

“I break into GJ facilities all the time,” Chi said, “but they're never guarded on the level of the one you're talking about. I've never needed to care about their coms. What the hell was going on in that 'toy company' anyway?”

“Playtypus Toys--”

“Tell me you're joking,” Chi said.

“Unfortunately, no,” Kim said. “Anyway, the reason that my good friend Jacob Phelps ended up there was that in the time since my incarceration GJ had centralized their . . . less than shining operations. Playtypus,” Chi snorted; Kim ignored it, “oversaw operational planning for the entire North American life-ruining wing of of the Global Justice Alliance.”

“Because when I think 'Justice' I think having an entire division dedicated to ruining people's lives,” Chi said.

“The technicians seemed to feel the same way, and once I was tapped into a local GJ network--”

“You were already tapped into their coms,” Chi said.

“I was intercepting the guards' communications,” Kim said. “The guards' coms were made to send signals fast and loud so that they couldn't be jammed, muffled, or interdicted. They had all the subtlety of a scream and all the direction of candlelight.

“They're easy to intercept, which means that they never say anything interesting over that system,” Kim said. “Just stuff like, 'Patrol five checking in three twenty-six PM-'“

“They used twelve hour time?” Chi asked.

“They shifted their method of time telling using a pattern that I never worked out and varied their code words to the degree it was impossible to work out what you'd have to say to fool the person listening. One check-in might be, 'Alfred from Alberta bringing Avocados' while another was 'Kapersky mates in five.'“

“Given that Americans tend to associate the name 'Kapersky' with internet security and would default to 'Kasparov' for K-named Russian chess player,” Chi said, “I can see how that would be difficult to figure out.”

“Some of their check-ins involved rigidly sticking to esoteric rules --which most people wouldn't know existed without Google, days to waste, and really strong coffee--” Kim said, “while others were built around blatant falsehoods, for example: 'When the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor'.”

“Well that's a movie quote,” Chi said.

And suddenly something made sense to Kim. “I think I finally figured out the pattern behind their Fibonacci check-ins.”

“They had a special code for when they checked in at a Fibonacci number passed the hour?” Chi asked.

“Yup,” Kim said.

“Are you sure we're talking about GJ?” Chi asked.

“That's how it felt to me too,” Kim said.

“These are the people who poured millions of dollars into the Ron Factor and the Rufus Factor without ever figuring out how to create an agent on either of their levels,” Chi said.

“I know.”

“These are the ones who devoted resources to protecting 'secrets' that weren't secret from people who didn't want to learn them.”

“And yet, somehow, Playtypus,” Kim said.

“Ok,” Chi said, “I give in. The universe makes no sense. Tell me your epic tale of revenge starting with why you needed the tech's mobile database.”

“For all communications of any import GJ uses directed communications,” Kim said. “First an all direction ping is sent out from the initiating device to notify the device it will be communicating with. The receiving device sends a directed ping in response. Once the second ping is received each device knows where the other is and all communications take place in a theoretically direct line between them, though it's actually more of a cone due to the need for tolerance and the nature of wave propagation.”

“Thus meaning that that you have to be between the two devices to intercept the signals,” Chi said. “Better than I expect from GJ.”

“Their hardware's always been good,” Kim said. “Consider the hover-jets, for example. It's their people where they tended to fall down.”

“Point.”

“Anyway,” Kim said, “They maintain multiple different networks so that cracking any one doesn't automatically give away the keys to the kingdom. Top agents get the satellite communications because the odds that someone will be directly between an agent and a satellite to pick up the transmission are exceedingly low.

“Everyone else gets the underground infrastructure, given all the tubes, tunnels, and bases GJ has down there it wasn't exactly hard for them to lay out multiple non-connected but overlapping communications systems. Of course, the signal has to get underground somehow.”

“So you were looking for the above ground station,” Chi said.

“Specifically the area's primary above ground station that connected to particular network being used by the GJ security technicians in the area,” Kim said.

“And once you had the Mobile Database all you had to do was make two connections from a sufficient distance apart and you'd be able to triangulate.”

“Yup,” Kim said. “Then I slipped it back in her pocket, robbed the Smarty Mart--”

“You really are just a career criminal now, aren't you?” Chi asked.

At first Kim just grinned at first, then she said, “I couldn't keep on setting off the alarms by manually doing things on site, so having remote capabilities like FPV drones, programmable drones, fly-on-a-wall cams, and such really helped. Crank up the transmission strength on a fly cam to 11 and they think there's someone on the radio right outside their door even though they can't see anyone. Do it on a dozen at the same time and they think it's an organized attack.”

“I'm not even going to ask how Smarty Mart got Gemini's fly-on-a-wall technology,” Chi said.

“Best you don't,” Kim agreed.

“But the drones,” Chi said, “they'd show up on camera a lot better than a fly, so there's no way they'd mistake that as a system bug.”

“If I were tripping the sensors with the drones directly, yes,” Kim said. “but I was using them to do other things. Pulse ultra and infrasonics to mess with those sensors, shine IR at random to screw with that, randomly fire microwave bursts, generally just try to mess up everything. Smarty Mart had everything I needed for that and more.”

“Keep them on edge about an attack for so long that when one does come they don't even recognize it as a difference from the norm and have completely burnt out their alertness,” Chi said.

“That was part of it,” Kim said, “yes.”

“But for now you were looking for a ground-level station for one of GJ's non super secret spy stuff networks,” Chi said.

“Pretty much.”

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
~~Three and a Half Months Ago~~  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

KSAD really took to the last three letters of it's call sign seriously: all sad music; all the time. It didn't have a very big fan base. Even something like Elton John's “Sad Songs” was too upbeat for them since it was about coping with sadness rather than uselessly wallowing in it.

A station that viewed, “When all hope is gone / why don't you tune in and turn 'em on?” as overly optimistic didn't exactly draw people in and make them want to visit.

The fact that it had rented out it's antenna tower to cell phone companies made sense because depressing the ever-loving Hell out of people didn't seem to be a viable profit model.

Thus it provided a plausible explanation for having a transmitter with a range of more than forty miles and a lot of receivers that in no way belonged and said transmitter while gathering no interest from much of anyone.

If not for the fact that the programming was so over the top depressing, and utter dreck to boot, it would have made a great cover. As it was Kim felt like she could have saved some time just by looking for towers, when she'd learned the story behind this one she'd have known something was up for sure.

∗ ∗ ∗

On a scale from Frugal Lucre to Dr. Dementor she rated the security at one point three. There was some sense in not having it heavily guarded, since guards drew attention.

When they were looking for something to steal, people often looked for the best locks on the assumption that the best loot would have the best protection. The same was true of facilities. The better guarded a place was, the more it resembled clarion call to those with less than pure intentions.

Still, a one point three? Really?

The station was located atop the highest point around and Kim estimated its range as some 45 miles. Quick math in her head converted that to over six thousand three hundred square miles. The level of technology utilized in GJ devices and the energy savings gained by using directed transmissions meant that there was no reason to assume that this station didn't cover GJ communications from that entire area.

Given the GJ presence in the area, and the fact that the station was obviously considered an important one, even if not for super secret spy stuff, to be given such a privileged position, it really called for more than a one point three.

Kim wouldn't have been surprised if one of the secondary stations, used to fill the gaps between primary stations based on a modified Apollonian circle packing algorithm, had security like this, but a primary?

She slipped in completely undetected, bypassed the areas used to actually run the legitimate radio station front, and found herself in a massive routing station within minutes and without having to put any real effort into avoiding guards or security measures.

Based on the abysmal security, Kim revised her original plan, which had been more of an outline anyway, and decided to make this her temporary base of operations.

Five minutes later she was set up to catch, read, potentially modify, and send every transmission routed through the station. Again, no real effort. She wouldn't be able to change live transmission because the resulting lag would be noticeable, and she wasn't set up to do the voice or image synthesis necessary to change a phone call or a video chat anyway, but other than that she owned this portion of the GJ network.

How was it even possible that this belonged to the same organization as the one running Playtypus?

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
~~Present~~  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

This, at least, made sense, and so Chi said, “See, that sounds like the GJ I know.”

“The one that I knew too,” Kim said. “Which is why I said that I'm not convinced GJ was behind everything.”

“You said that?” Chi closed his eyes, it helped to have less stimulus, and quickly thought back over the time since Kim had arrived. “Ok, yup, you said that. Slipped my mind, sorry.”

“No big,” Kim said. “My best guess is that some outside group is using GJ, and other organizations, for cover and they're only taking an active interest in the parts that they care about. Dirty tricks squad gets funding, training, and decent security; general operations not so much.”

“Sort of a 'She works on the guidance system' mentality,” Chi said.

“Pretty much,” Kim said. She sighed. “It's been so long since I've seen a Bond film.”

“I'm not a big fan of the ones that have come out since you . . .” Chi couldn't think of the right words and finally just made gestures.

Kim nodded.

“We could watch the cello one the next time you need a break from storytelling,” Chi suggested.

“I'd like that,” Kim said, “but for now: routing station.”

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
~~Three and a Half Months Ago~~  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

The alarms continuing to go off at Playtypus with no apparent cause had already resulted in uncomplimentary messages to be sent to the technicians who had certified the sensors as working properly. This was something Kim could use.

The routing station was scheduled for a regular check up in five days. Kim forged a note suggesting that if the Playtypus sitch, she didn't use that word of course, wasn't resolved by then the team be diverted to Playtypus, so the malfunctioning hardware would have a third set of eyes look at it, rather than be sent to check out hardware that was currently functioning perfectly fine.

Then Kim created and ran two simple programs. The first was to retrieve all of the recent messages to pass through the station that hadn't been overwritten by new ones. The second was to save all of the messages from that point forward. She'd grabbed some hard drives from Smarty Mart, but it turned out that the hub had more than enough space for her purposes. That surprised her a bit since the hub wasn't actually designed to store any data. It was just supposed to pass it along.

With the programs running Kim figured it was time for sleep. Her original outline-plan had her sleeping in the woods, as she had been doing, but the same astonishing lack of security at the hub that led to her making the station her home base instead of simply tapping the station suggested much more inviting sleeping arrangements.  
She balled her hoodie up into a pillow and slept on the floor.

∗ ∗ ∗

Kim woke inside and relatively warm. Such a nice feeling. She set her drones to trip various alarms on a random basis and then she got to work on going over the recovered and intercepted transmissions.

It was mundane stuff, minutia, employee evaluations, requests for leave, requests for transfers, recommendations for promotion, demotion, investigation, censure, employee of the month recognition, requisition requests, what must have been several quintillion statements that units were underfunded and overworked, personnel changes being considered and how the resulting empty positions would be filled.

It was exactly what she wanted.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
~~Present~~  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

“And why, pray tell, did you want to read requests to use two days paid leave to visit little Timmy on his 13th birthday?” Chi asked.

“Because I was looking for something,” Kim said.

“Did you find it?”

“Took a bit, but yes.”

“And?”

“Something else important happened first,” Kim said.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
~~Three Months and One Week Ago~~  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

Kim hadn't been aware that GJ had a protocol for what to do if three separate teams of technicians found no problems with alarms that were going off over a protracted period, but she was fully ready to make use of it when she saw the results.

Playtypus's human security would be stepped up as if they had reliable intelligence indicating an imminent full scale incursion, but that didn't interest Kim very much at this point.

What did was that at the same time all external alarm systems at the facility were to be replaced, --even the ones Kim hadn't found a way to trigger-- and be replaced in a single day by a veritable army of technicians called from the entire local area.

Even more interesting was that the plan apparently ran out. If the replacement didn't solve the problem, if an attack never came, there wasn't really a plan on what to do. They could hardly keep on a level of heightened security indefinitely, if they could they would have made that their normal level, while at the same time it wasn't as if they could just disable their security and ignore all future alarms.

Kim made note of the various shipments of replacement sensors of various descriptions. Then she did a flurry of forgery as she suggested various possible interpretations of the events and ways to move forward.

While she made the idea that the focus on Playtypus could be the goal of an actual attacker planning to hit another site in the area, the consensus to come out of her invented speculation, a consensus several of the actual technicians agreed with when they got the chance, was that if the new external sensors didn't solve the problem and an actual attack did not imminently take place, the facility's entire security system would have to torn apart, analyzed, and reassembled from the ground up.

∗ ∗ ∗

The innocuous looking eighteen wheeler read, “Shop Smart; shop S-Mart,” which was the first sign something was off about it. A real Smarty Mart truck would read, “Smarty Mart: where smart shoppers shop smart”. As the truck came closer Kim realized that the sides of the trailer were variable pigment chameleon “paint”. It was almost indistinguishable from ordinary paint, and much cheaper than an actual cloaking device, but it never had quite the right sheen to it.

Doubtless the truck would have Playtypus insignia on it when it actually reached its intended destination.

The truck reached a curve in the road, and now was coming straight for her. There wasn't a lot of distance now. She readied herself and the old mattress. When the truck passed under the overpass Kim launched both into the open air. The mattress landed on the extreme rear of the truck, Kim's body landed on the mattress.

The landing was less loud than an uncushioned one would have been, less painful too, but that didn't mean she wasn't risking detection, or in a lot of pain. She narrowly avoided falling off the back of the truck and got to work on picking the lock.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
~~Present~~  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

“You mattress surfed onto a speeding truck--”

“Literally speeding,” Kim said; “not a lot of traffic cops in that particular area.”

“-then broke into it while in motion?” Chi asked.

“Yeah,” Kim said. “That's what I said isn't it?”

“It's just a new one on me,” Chi said. “What happened to the mattress?”

“Well I had to keep it with me for my getaway,” Kim said, “didn't I?”

“And we're back to the speeding truck,” Chi said. “Wouldn't that thing be like a sail?”

“I tied it to the door.”

“Before or after you picked the lock?”

“Before, of course.”

“Of course,” Chi echoed. Chi wasn't going to ask where the rope came from. Sometimes it was better just not to ask.

A moment later Kim said, “Oh, I forgot something.”

“Is it more alarm tripping?” Chi asked. “Because I think you're overdoing the Battle of the Hydaspes thing. I mean how long does it really take to wear down a facility's guards with false alarms?

“Surprisingly little time,” Kim said. “And no, I didn't leave out making false alarms. I'd never stopped that, that's why the GJ policy said that they had to replace the sensors.

“Mind you that policy was probably made with the usual number of external sensors a GJ facility has in mind.”

“Probably.”

“No, what I left out was how I kept tripping the alarms until the human security was thoroughly ground down without being detected even as GJ kept upping security.”

“So you weren't breaking in to make the sensors not go off.”

“I think that would be noticed when their tests to see if they were installed properly failed to trigger a response.”

“Ok, good point,” Chi conceded.

“Anyway, what I left out was that while I was working on decoding the information I'd gotten from the records facility--”

“It feels like years ago that you talked about that,” Chi said.

“You're the one who suggested I tell my story,” Kim said.

That was true, and he still thought it might well be helpful to Kim for her to share with someone. He nodded.

“So in the middle of that I bumped into this cute kid running from men who were clearly government. Easy enough to help out, much harder to convince the kid that hacking a CIA records depository wasn't a recreational activity.”

“I think we both know people who would disagree,” Chi said.

“Yeah, but this kid wasn't on that level yet,” Kim said. “Maybe after a decade or two of rigorous practice.”

“I'm guessing that you got a favor out of helping,” Chi said.

“All of the alarm systems had built in tampering detection which meant that I knew it would be possible to write a program that erased itself and evidence of what it did if the device were looked at in too much detail, since that kind of testing would be flagged as tampering. Knowing and coding are two very different things.

“Programming an autopilot, or switching the hub from automatically relaying messages to letting me get first crack at them, recording them, and then relaying them, that's easy stuff. What I needed for the sensors, though. Well, knowing something can be done and coding it are very different matters.”

“So you contact the kid, get your program, and then what?” Chi asked.

“Install the program onto all the sensors in that shipment and repeat for every sensor shipment,” Kim said.

“And the ones they randomly select for in depth diagnostics check out fine because the program erases itself,” Chi said, “while the rest keep your program . . . that does what exactly?”

“Keep on tripping the sensors at random,” Kim said. “On a delay of course so that they didn't do it while they were being installed.”

Chi nodded.

“Also for sensors that could pick up certain signals they were set to go off if they received one signal and stop the random going off if they received another.”

“Accomplishing what?” Chi asked. “You'd already had them set to do a top to bottom component by component break down and evaluation of the security system, which would set off your program's kill switch and erase itself.”

“Chi,” Kim said, “It's one thing to recommend something, it's another to actually get it done. GJ wasn't going waste the time and manpower rechecking the one part of the system they were absolutely sure wasn't the problem. The sensors couldn't possibly be the problem because they'd just replaced them --after the problem started-- and they were obviously working fine because they were factory fresh parts that had just been tested when they were installed.”

“Ok, ok,” Chi said.

“You're getting worked up,” Kim said.

Chi thought that over. Was he?

Yup. Definitely getting annoyed.

“Sorry, I guess I'm getting a little sick of hearing the preparations for an attack that never comes,” Chi said.

“Now you know how Porous felt on the banks of the Hydaspes,” Kim said.

“That it would be really nice if someone just throttled Alexander?” Chi asked.

“The key wasn't in moving undetected--” Kim said.

“-it was in upping the noise to signal ratio so much that detecting it barely registered,” Chi said. “I know. I'm the one who brought up the battle. I just feel like you could maybe skip ahead to fire swamp.”

“You already used that reference,” Kim said.

“Tell me what it was you were looking for in the not super secret spy stuff network and then we're watching the cello movie,” Chi said.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
~~Three Months and Four Days Ago~~  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

While outside technicians had rushed to replace the facility's external security systems in an insufficient amount of time with insufficient manpower, a virtual army had surrounded the facility drawing precious resources away from other Global Justice endeavors, and the facility's guards had wished for nothing more than the alarms to stop going off, the on-site security system technicians to Playtypus found themselves in the strange position desperately hoping their workplace would be attacked, and be attacked on a massive scale.

They'd been the ones trying to get to the bottom of the alarms from day one, they'd been the ones who constantly pronounced the security system not-broken, and they were the ones who stood to lose everything it an attack didn't materialize.

Even if they didn't know of the plans to transfer them to places uniformly unappealing, they had to suspect that such might be in the works. The facility's guards being increased at least indicated that the powers that be were open to the possibility that the on-site technicians hadn't missed anything and the alarms were supposed to be going off.

But everything else was an indication that there was a strong belief the on site techs had simply missed some problem and the entire episode was a complete waste of time and resources. Every time that other security technicians were called in it sent a clear message that the ones already there weren't trusted.  
Approving the plan of having outside technicians go over the entire internal security system was, for many, the final straw.

It wasn't just that outsiders, not even cleared to be on the base, much less in it, under normal circumstances were coming to take apart and analyze their, security system for flaws that they would have had to consistently miss in their own diagnostics, it was also how soon they were scheduled to do so.

The alarms going off were annoying. Running the facility like it was under siege was expensive and counterproductive especially since there had been no verifiable sign of any enemy, but if there were any faith in the on-site security technicians and their analysis of the state of their own hardware, the plan would be to keep the security intact and functioning for longer than a potential enemy would wait to strike.

Yet the outsiders were going to be let inside the facility a mere two weeks after the problems had started.

The funding and the manpower were there, but the powers that be clearly weren't taking a potential threat seriously. If the outsiders found a flaw, the on-site technicians would be blamed -–even though they had never been authorized to take the security system completely apart for such a detailed check-- if they didn't then how much longer would the higher ups wait for an actual attack? Probably not long. They'd just declare the entire system flawed on some synergistic level and replace the entire thing with one that didn't go off when they didn't want it to.

Some pointed out that this might be the enemy's plan, forcing the system to be replaced with a less sensitive, and thus less secure, one. Some pointed out that triggering the system could be an attempt to get the security staff replaced so that an incursion could be made while neophytes were staffing the facility. Some actually tried to be helpful to the coming outsiders, they shared what tests they had been authorized to run, and which ones they hadn't. A lot just panicked.

There was a flood of attempts to get transferred into other units, even though it would mean lower pay than they were currently getting. People wanted to get out before the hammer dropped, they wanted to have things they could point to as reasons it wasn't their fault, they wanted anything that would grant them a reprieve should things go down badly for them.

Kim read all of this and more.

She also read about the plans to punish them for the embarrassing waste should an attack not materialize. Plans that did indeed involve being transferred away.

She doubted there were ever so many security technicians in flux before.

Apparently the Playtypus facility was a sought after posting, at least for those who loved money more than their conscience, and as a result the security techs there were more experienced than many of the ones on teams they were requesting to be transferred to.

There was a sizable contingent of GJ individuals in the area with hiring power who didn't care about the alarm situation at the facility and were quite willing to use the opportunity to get personnel with skill and experience they usually wouldn't have access to. Of course, that meant making an opening for them, which meant moving someone else out of a position, which meant a cascade of potential transfers.

That was before one considered the plans in the works to replace the entire on-site staff. Plans that would create a similar, larger, cascade.

From Kim's position at the center of all of discussion of all of the potential staffing changes, it was simple enough to locate a unit with the potential to become what she wanted, speed up some things, slow down others, change an denied to an approved, and get the thing she'd first come to the radio station for.

With the new information she was able to find exactly what she'd been looking for with better results than she'd ever anticipated.

With the necessary edits made she said, “Enjoy your vacation,” before moving from work to sleep.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗  
~~Present~~  
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

“CC?” Chi said more than asked. “Really?”

“KC,” Kim corrected. “Kathy Callahan. She specializes in hardware --not much software experience-- so it was a good fit there, she's about my height, she'd been requesting the same two weeks leave --covering the period when the outside technicians would go in to overhaul the security system-- for over a year, and all I had to do to get her transferred into a new assignment where no one had ever met her was to give one person early retirement they'd also been requesting. When faced with how to fill the gap it was noted that someone had already worked out the “optimal transfers” to do it with as a result of the Playtypus sitch.”

“For someone worried about her dark side . . .” Chi said. “Paid vacation and early retirement?”

“My original plan, before I knew I could start living in the hub,” Kim said, “was to find someone like Callahan who would be considered to replace a corrupt tech, and then get rid of the corrupt tech. Probably have to run some difficult interference plan to keep the Callahan from getting the message she'd been transferred until after I was away.”

“Still not heart of darkness stuff, Kim,” Chi said.

“I haven't told you what I did once I got inside yet,” Kim said.

Chi looked appropriately disturbed at the way she said it.

Chi's composure recovered quickly, and he said in a not at all disturbed way, “Please tell me that the whole 'Alarms, alarms every where / but not a one confirmed' thing wasn't just so you could scout out the interior.”

“Of course not,” Kim said. “I'm telling you: there was no way to get into that place without setting off the alarms. The only solution was to desensitize them to the alarms or get them to replace the security system with one that was less good.”

“Or just go to the jerk's house,” Chi said. “It's not like he's going to forget 'That time I screwed over Kim Possible.'“

“I didn't want to break into his house,” Kim said firmly.

“Of course not,” Chi said. “You're Kim Possible, you wanted to drop out of an air vent, adopt a power pose,” Kim smiled at that, “and, since you were in rage mode, you'd talk about being all out of bubble gum.”

“I have never gotten that reference,” Kim admitted.

“ _They Live_ , 1988,” Chi said. “The movie should be required viewing. It's not very good from any kind of technical standpoint, but it should be required viewing.”

“And the bubble gum?” Kim asked.

“The main character walks in, sees the place filled with the enemy, and says, 'I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum,' then, and this is a part that's not your style, boomstick,” Chi said.

“Because shotguns are so much fun,” Kim said flatly.

“The action genre's a fantasy, Kim,” Chi said. “Instead of unicorns and dragons it shows us a world where all problems can be solved by, depending on the acceptable violence level, shooting them, punching them in the face, or throwing 30% more bricks at them.

“That's a lot more fantastical than dragons and unicorns, but it's also kind of fun. No problems that are as complex and difficult as … what was it you called Bonnie back in the day?”

Kim wasn't sure, but she knew it would only take a second or two for Chi to retrieve the information.

“'High school evil',” Chi said. “That's the fantasy: nothing as difficult as high school evil, all problems are as simple as foiling Dementor.”

Kim nodded.

“Would be a nice world,” she said.

“So, cello movie?” Chi asked.

“Cello movie,” Kim said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh good God, this chapter. Took forever, not remotely satisfied with it, and I really hope it isn't as much of a slog to read as it was to write. If I ever decide to do a fake false alarms thing again I'm just going to say, "Kim pulled a Halicarnassus," award bonus points to people who catch that that's the wrong reference, and be done with it.
> 
> Astute readers might note that I've flipped the original formulation Kim gave in So the Drama (deleted scene I believe) of, "Bonnie is High School Evil, Shego is real world evil." This is definitely intended to be a fic where real world evil is a good deal more complicated and difficult to solve than Shego-evil. If Kim were up against a traditional villain, she'd have won by now.
> 
> Kim's probably not going to run out of bubblegum next chapter since I'm thinking she'll spend a bit being Kathy Callahan and that will take up chapter 6.
> 
> References I made:
> 
> Playtronics - The toy company used as a front in _Sneakers_.
> 
> "Shop Smart, Shop S-Mart," and also "Boomstick" - _Army of Darkness_
> 
> Battle of the Hydaspes - Alexander the Great needed to get an army across a river but there was another army on the other side. He kept on faking troop movements until the opposing army just can't keep up that level alertness (his own troops can rest and remain alert because the movements are fake) and then sneaks across in the middle of a night. (And does it in a place he never faked doing it.)
> 
> Ongoing _The Princess Bride_ references.
> 
> "I've stolen a hoverjet, run up a black flag, and declared war on the world." - It is said that to become a pirate you steal a ship, make a black flag, and declare war on the world. Exactly who says this is unclear and it's not, in fact true (for example: a lot of the big names didn't have to steal their boats to get started.) The origin of the quote, though, is easier to determine. Edward Low. The beginning of his and his followers pirate career is described thus:
> 
>  _A General History of the Pyrates_ :  
> The next Day they took a small Vessel, and go in her, make a black Flag, and declared War against all the World.
> 
>  _The Pirates Own Book_ :  
> The next day they took a small vessel, went on board her, hoisted a black flag, and declared war with the whole world.


End file.
